I have been often interrupted while writing this letter, and suppose it is confused as well as incomplete.  I hope my next may tell of something decisive one way or the other.  News is not yet come from Lesseps, but the conduct of Oudinot and the formation of the new French ministry give reason to hope no good.  Many seem resolved to force back Pius IX. among his bleeding flock, into the city ruined by him, where he cannot remain, and if he come, all this struggle and sorrow is to be borne over again.  Mazzini stands firm as a rock.  I know not whether he hopes for a successful issue, but he believes in a God bound to protect men who do what they deem their duty.  Yet how long, O Lord, shall the few trample on the many?

I am surprised to see the air of perfect good faith with which articles from the London Times, upon the revolutionary movements, are copied into our papers.  There exists not in Europe a paper more violently opposed to the cause of freedom than the Times, and neither its leaders nor its foreign correspondence are to be depended upon.  It is said to receive money from Austria.  I know not whether this be true, or whether it be merely subservient to the aristocratical feeling of England, which is far more opposed to republican movements than is that of Russia; for in England fear embitters hate.  It is droll to remember our reading in the class-book.

    “Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are";—­

to think how bitter the English were on the Italians who succumbed, and see how they hate those who resist.  And their cowardice here in Italy is ludicrous.  It is they who run away at the least intimation of danger,—­it is they who invent all the “fe, fo, fum” stories about Italy,—­it is they who write to the Times and elsewhere that they dare not for their lives stay in Rome, where I, a woman, walk everywhere alone, and all the little children do the same, with their nurses.  More of this anon.

LETTER XXXII.

PROGRESS OF THE TRAGEDY.—­PIUS IX.  DISAVOWS LIBERALISM.—­OUDINOT,
AND THE ROMAN AUTHORITIES.—­SHAME OF FRANCE.—­DEVASTATION OF
THE CITY.—­COURAGE OF THE PEOPLE.—­BOMBS EXTINGUISHED.—­A CRISIS
APPROACHING.

Rome, June 21, 1849.

It is now two weeks since the first attack of Oudinot, and as yet we hear nothing decisive from Paris.  I know not yet what news may have come last night, but by the morning’s mail we did not even receive notice that Lesseps had arrived in Paris.

Whether Lesseps was consciously the servant of all these base intrigues, time will show.  His conduct was boyish and foolish, if it was not treacherous.  The only object seemed to be to create panic, to agitate, to take possession of Rome somehow, though what to do with it, if they could get it, the French government would hardly know.