woodman’s axe in the initiatory rites.  It was probably only in Romagna that the conventional threat against informers was often carried out.  The Romagnols invested Carbonarism with the wild intensity of their own temperament, resolute even to crime, but capable of supreme impersonal enthusiasm.  The ferment of expectancy that prevailed in Romagna is reflected in the Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, whom young Count Pietro Gamba made a Carbonaro, and who looked forward to seeing the Italians send the barbarians of all nations back to their own dens, as to the most interesting spectacle and moment in existence.  His lower apartments, he writes, were full of the bayonets, fusils and cartridges of his Carbonari cronies; ’I suppose that they consider me as a depot, to be sacrificed in case of accidents.  It is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is sacrificed.  It is a grand object—­the very poetry of politics.  Only think—­free Italy!!!  Why, there has been nothing like it since the days of Augustus.’

The movement on which such great hopes were set was to begin in the kingdom of Naples in the spring of 1820.  The concession of the hard-won Spanish Constitution in the month of March encouraged the Neapolitans to believe that they might get a like boon from their own King if they directed all the forces at their command to this single end.  To avoid being compromised, they sought rather to dissociate themselves from the patriots of other parts of Italy than to co-operate with them in an united effort.  The Carbonari of the Neapolitan kingdom, who were the entire authors of the revolution, which, after many unfortunate delays, broke out on the 1st of July, had good cause for thinking that they were in a position to dictate terms; the mistake they made was to suppose that a charter conceded by a Bourbon of Naples could ever be worth the paper on which it was written.  Not only among the people, but in the army the Carbonari had thousands of followers on whom they could rely, and several whole regiments were only waiting their orders to rise in open revolt.  The scheme was to take possession of the persons of the King and the royal family, and retain them as hostages till the Constitution was granted.  Such extreme measures were not necessary.  The standard of rebellion was raised at Monteforte by two officers named Morelli and Silvati, who had brought over a troop of cavalry from Nola, and by the priest Menechini.  In all Neapolitan insurrections there was sure to be a priest; the Neapolitan Church, much though there is to be laid to its account, must be admitted to have frequently shown sympathy with the popular side.  Menechini enjoyed an immense, if brief, popularity which he used to allay the anger of the mob and to procure the safety of obnoxious persons.  The King sent two generals and a body of troops against the Chartists, but when the Carbonari symbols were recognised on the insurgent flags, the troops showed such clear signs