O Rome, my country! could I imagine that the triumph of what I held dear was to heap such desolation on thy head!

Speaking of the republic, you say, “Do you not wish Italy had a great man?” Mazzini is a great man.  In mind, a great, poetic statesman; in heart, a lover; in action, decisive and full of resource as Caesar.  Dearly I love Mazzini.  He came in, just as I had finished the first letter to you.  His soft, radiant look makes melancholy music in my soul; it consecrates my present life, that, like the Magdalen, I may, at the important hour, shed all the consecrated ointment on his head.  There is one, Mazzini, who understands thee well,—­who knew thee no less when an object of popular fear than now of idolatry,—­and who, if the pen be not held too feebly, will help posterity to know thee too!

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TO HER SISTER, MRS. E.K.  CHANNING.

Rome, June 19, 1849.

As was Eve, at first, I suppose every mother is delighted by the birth of a man-child.  There is a hope that he will conquer more ill, and effect more good, than is expected from girls.  This prejudice in favor of man does not seem to be destroyed by his shortcomings for ages.  Still, each mother hopes to find in hers an Emanuel.  I should like very much to see your children, but hardly realize I ever shall.  The journey home seems so long, so difficult, so expensive.  I should really like to lie down here, and sleep my way into another sphere of existence, if I could take with me one or two that love and need me, and was sure of a good haven for them on that other side.

The world seems to go so strangely wrong!  The bad side triumphs; the blood and tears of the generous flow in vain.  I assist at many saddest scenes, and suffer for those whom I knew not before.  Those whom I knew and loved,—­who, if they had triumphed, would have opened for me an easier, broader, higher-mounting road,—­are everyday more and more involved in earthly ruin.  Eternity is with us, but there is much darkness and bitterness in this portion of it.  A baleful star rose on my birth, and its hostility, I fear, will never be disarmed while I walk below.

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TO W.H.  CHANNING.

July, 1849.

I cannot tell you what I endured in leaving Rome, abandoning the wounded soldiers,—­knowing that there is no provision made for them, when they rise from the beds where they have been thrown by a noble courage, and have suffered with a noble patience.  Some of the poorer men, who rise bereft even of the right arm,—­one having lost both the right arm and the right leg,—­I could have provided for with a small sum.  Could I have sold my hair, or blood from my arm, I would have done it.  Had any of the rich Americans remained in Rome, they would have given it to me; they helped nobly at first, in the service of the hospitals, when there was far less need; but they had all gone.  What would I have given could I but have spoken to one of the Lawrences, or the Phillipses!  They could and would have saved this misery.  These poor men are left helpless in the power of a mean and vindictive foe.  You felt so oppressed in the Slave States; imagine what I felt at seeing all the noblest youth, all the genius of this dear land, again enslaved!