Lamb, with a collateral view to the rural beauties of Edmonton, but night had fallen on all such hopes two hours at least before we reached the Bell. There, indeed, we found them somewhat more alert to comprehend our wishes; they laughed when we spoke of Gilpin, showed us a print of the race and the window where Mrs. Gilpin must have stood,—­balcony, alas! there was none; allowed us to make our own fire, and provided us a wedding dinner of tough meat and stale bread.  Nevertheless we danced, dined, paid (I believe), and celebrated the wedding quite to our satisfaction, though in the space of half an hour, as we knew friends were even at that moment expecting us to tea at some miles’ distance.  But it is always pleasant in this world of routine to act out a freak.  “Such a one,” said an English gentleman, “one of us would rarely have dreamed of, much, less acted.”  “Why, was it not pleasant?” “Oh, very! but so out of the way!”

Returning, we passed the house where Freiligrath finds a temporary home, earning the bread, of himself and his family in a commercial house.  England houses the exile, but not without house-tax, window-tax, and head-tax.  Where is the Arcadia that dares invite all genius to her arms, and change her golden wheat for their green laurels and immortal flowers?  Arcadia?—­would the name were America!

And now returns naturally to my mind one of the most interesting things I have seen here or elsewhere,—­the school for poor Italian boys, sustained and taught by a few of their exiled compatriots, and especially by the mind and efforts of Mazzini.  The name of Joseph Mazzini is well known to those among us who take an interest in the cause of human freedom, who, not content with the peace and ease bought for themselves by the devotion and sacrifices of their fathers, look with anxious interest on the suffering nations who are preparing for a similar struggle.  Those who are not, like the brutes that perish, content with the enjoyment of mere national advantages, indifferent to the idea they represent, cannot forget that the human family is one,

  “And beats with one great heart.”

They know that there can be no genuine happiness, no salvation for any, unless the same can be secured for all.

To this universal interest in all nations and places where man, understanding his inheritance, strives to throw off an arbitrary rule and establish a state of things where he shall be governed as becomes a man, by his own conscience and intelligence,—­where he may speak the truth as it rises in his mind, and indulge his natural emotions in purity,—­is added an especial interest in Italy, the mother of our language and our laws, our greatest benefactress in the gifts of genius, the garden of the world, in which our best thoughts have delighted to expatiate, but over whose bowers now hangs a perpetual veil of sadness, and whose noblest plants are doomed to removal,—­for, if they cannot bear their ripe and perfect fruit in another climate, they are not permitted to lift their heads to heaven in their own.