as the peace-breaker, and, as she was pouring troops into Italy and massing them near the Piedmontese frontier, it was easy to exhibit her in that light.  After having made Austria look very guilty, Cavour proceeded to lay himself out to conciliate England, whose policy was, at that moment, everything that he wished it not to be; but he was determined not to quarrel.  The Earl of Malmesbury kept him informed of the “real state of Italy,” of which he was supposed to be profoundly ignorant.  The Lombards no longer desired to be united to Piedmont, and a war of liberation would be the signal of the reawakening of all the old jealousies, while republicans, dreamers, pretenders, seekers of revenge, power, riches, would tear up Italy between them.  In the House of Lords, Lord Derby declared that the Austrian was the best of good governments, and only sought to improve its Italian provinces.  Cavour concealed the irritation which he strongly felt.  Lord Derby’s speech, he said, did not sound so bad in the original as in the translation, and, after all, England’s apparent change of front came from a great virtue, patriotism.  She suppressed her natural sympathies, because she believed that patriotic reasons required her to back up Austria.  He repeated to the Chamber what he had often said in private, that the English alliance was the one which he had always valued above all others.  It was a remarkable thing to say at a moment when he hoped so much more from France than from England.  But precisely because he hoped to obtain material assistance from France, he was more than ever anxious to remain on good terms with England.  He finely resisted the temptation of saying, “We can do without you.”  After having got the French into Italy, the next thing to do would be to get them out of it, and he foresaw that England would be useful then.  Moreover, angry as he was in his heart, he did not doubt that the “suppressed sympathies” would break out again and prove irresistible.  They were even breaking out already, for the arrival of the Neapolitan prisoners caused one of those powerful waves of feeling which, in England, always end by influencing the Government.

Meanwhile, Lord Derby’s ministry made Herculean efforts to ward off war, in which, by force of traditions that govern all English parties, they had the opposition entirely with them.  They begged Austria to evacuate the Papal Legations, and to leave off interfering with the States of Central Italy.  They even asked Cavour to help them, by formulating his views on the best means of peaceably improving the condition of Italy.  Cavour answered that at the root of the matter lay the hatred of a foreign yoke.  The Austrians in Italy formed, not a government, but a military occupation.  They were not established but encamped.  Every house, from the humblest home to the most sumptuous palace, was closed against them.  In the theatres, public places, streets, there was an absolute separation between them and the