and eager for action.  They are often reviewed, hear speeches, and sometimes get medals.  We take places always, if it is not difficult.  I myself was present once when the troops advanced; our men behaved gallantly, and had the advantage in the first skirmish; but afterward the enemy pointed on us artillery from the heights, and, naturally, we retired.  But as to supposing that his Majesty Charles Albert is indifferent to the success of Italy in the war, that is absurd.  He is ‘the Sword of Italy’; he is the most magnanimous of princes; he is seriously occupied about the war; many a day I have been called into his tent to talk it over, before he was up in the morning!”

Sad was it that the heroic Milan, the heroic Venice, the heroic Sicily, should lean on such a reed as this, and by hurried acts, equally unworthy as unwise, sully the glory of their shields.  Some names, indeed, stand, out quite free from this blame.  Mazzini, who kept up a combat against folly and cowardice, day by day and hour by hour, with almost supernatural strength, warned the people constantly of the evils which their advisers were drawing upon them.  He was heard then only by a few, but in this “Italia del Popolo” may be found many prophecies exactly fulfilled, as those of “the golden-haired love of Phoebus” during the struggles of Ilium.  He himself, in the last sad days of Milan, compared his lot to that of Cassandra.  At all events, his hands are pure from that ill.  What could be done to arouse Lombardy he did, but the “Moderate” party unable to wean themselves from old habits, the pupils of the wordy Gioberti thought there could be no safety unless under the mantle of a prince.  They did not foresee that he would run away, and throw that mantle on the ground.

Tommaso and Manin also were clear in their aversion to these measures; and with them, as with all who were resolute in principle at that time, a great influence has followed.

It is said Charles Albert feels bitterly the imputations on his courage, and says they are most ungrateful, since he has exposed the lives of himself and his sons in the combat.  Indeed, there ought to be made a distinction between personal and mental courage.  The former Charles Albert may possess, may have too much of what this still aristocratic world calls “the feelings of a gentleman” to shun exposing himself to a chance shot now and then.  An entire want of mental courage he has shown.  The battle, decisive against him, was made so by his giving up the moment fortune turned against him.  It is shameful to hear so many say this result was inevitable, just because the material advantages were in favor of the Austrians.  Pray, was never a battle won against material odds?  It is precisely such that a good leader, a noble man, may expect to win.  Were the Austrians driven out of Milan because the Milanese had that advantage?  The Austrians would again, have suffered repulse from them, but for the baseness of this man, on whom they