into the water; the child sprang in after them, and with a shout of Viva l’Italia, fixed them again at the masthead under a sharp fire.  Zorzi was, of course, the small hero of the hour, especially among the women.  General Pepe commanded the sortie, with Ulloa, Fontana and Cosenz as his lieutenants; Ugo Bassi, the patriot monk of Bologna, marched at the head of a battalion with the crucifix, the only arms he ever carried, in his hand.  The success cost Italy dear, as Alessandro Poerio, poet and patriot, the brother of Baron Carlo Poerio of Naples, lost his life by a wound received at Mestre.  But the confidence of Venice in her little army was increased a hundredfold.

The most important event of the autumn of 1848 was the gradual but continuous break-up of the Papal authority in Rome.  The meeting of the new Parliament only served to accentuate the want of harmony between the Pope and his ministers; assassinations were frequent; what law there was was administered by the political clubs.  In Count Terenzio Mamiani, Pius IX. found a Prime Minister who, for eloquence and patriotism, could hardly be rivalled, but hampered as he was by the opposition he encountered from the Sovereign, and by the absence of any real or solid moderate constitutional party in the Chamber of Deputies, Mamiani could carry out very few of the improvements he desired to effect, and in August he retired from an impracticable task, to be replaced by men of less note and talent than himself.

Wishing to create fresh complications for the Pope, the Austrians invaded the Legations, regardless of his protests, and after the fall of Milan, General Welden advanced on Bologna, where, however, his forces were so furiously attacked by the inhabitants and the few carabineers who were all the troops in the town, that they were dislodged from the strong position they had taken up on the Montagnola, the hill which forms the public park, and obliged to fly beyond the city walls.  Radetsky disapproved of Welden’s movements on Bologna, and ordered him not to return to the assault.

Had the Austrians returned and massacred half the population of Bologna, the Pope might have been saved.  When Rome heard that the stormy capital of Romagna was up in arms, once more, for a moment, there were united counsels.  ‘His Holiness,’ ran the official proclamation, ’was firmly resolved to repel the Austrian invasion with all the means which his State and the well-regulated enthusiasm of his people could supply.’  The Chamber confirmed the ministerial proposal to demand French help against Austria.  But all this brave show of energy vanished with the pressing danger, and Bologna, which, by its manly courage, had galvanised the whole bloodless body-politic, now hastened the hour of dissolution by lapsing into a state of deplorable anarchy, the populace using the arms with which they had driven out the Austrians, to establish a reign of murder and pillage.  L.C.  Farini restored something like order, but the general weakness of the power of government became every day more apparent.