“A ROMAN.

“Rome, July 4, 1849.”

Yes; July 4th, the day so joyously celebrated in our land, is that of the entrance of the French into Rome!

I know not whether the Romans will follow out this programme with constancy, as the sterner Milanese have done.  If they can, it will draw upon them endless persecutions, countless exactions, but at once educate and prove them worthy of a nobler life.

Yesterday I went over the scene of conflict.  It was fearful even to see the Casinos Quattro Venti and Vascello, where the French and Romans had been several days so near one another, all shattered to pieces, with fragments of rich stucco and painting still sticking to rafters between the great holes made by the cannonade, and think that men had stayed and fought in them when only a mass of ruins.  The French, indeed, were entirely sheltered the last days; to my unpractised eyes, the extent and thoroughness of their works seemed miraculous, and gave me the first clear idea of the incompetency of the Italians to resist organized armies.  I saw their commanders had not even known enough of the art of war to understand how the French were conducting the siege.  It is true, their resources were at any rate inadequate to resistance; only continual sorties would have arrested the progress of the foe, and to make them and man the wall their forces were inadequate.  I was struck more than ever by the heroic valor of our people,—­let me so call them now as ever; for go where I may, a large part of my heart will ever remain in Italy.  I hope her children will always acknowledge me as a sister, though I drew not my first breath here.  A Contadini showed me where thirty-seven braves are buried beneath a heap of wall that fell upon them in the shock of one cannonade.  A marble nymph, with broken arm, looked sadly that way from her sun-dried fountain; some roses were blooming still, some red oleanders, amid the ruin.  The sun was casting its last light on the mountains on the tranquil, sad Campagna, that sees one leaf more turned in the book of woe.  This was in the Vascello.  I then entered the French ground, all mapped and hollowed like a honeycomb.  A pair of skeleton legs protruded from a bank of one barricade; lower, a dog had scratched away its light covering of earth from the body of a man, and discovered it lying face upward all dressed; the dog stood gazing on it with an air of stupid amazement.  I thought at that moment, recalling some letters received:  “O men and women of America, spared these frightful sights, these sudden wrecks of every hope, what angel of heaven do you suppose has time to listen to your tales of morbid woe?  If any find leisure to work for men to-day, think you not they have enough to do to care for the victims here?”