“P.S.  If you thought of a middle plan between a Spectator and a newspaper, why not?—­only not on a Sunday.  Not that Sunday is not an excellent day, but it is engaged already.  We will call it the ‘Tenda Rossa,’ the name Tassoni gave an answer of his in a controversy, in allusion to the delicate hint of Timour the Lame, to his enemies, by a ‘Tenda’ of that colour, before he gave battle.  Or we will call it ‘Gli,’ or ‘I Carbonari,’ if it so please you—­or any other name full of ‘pastime and prodigality,’ which you may prefer.  Let me have an answer.  I conclude poetically, with the bellman, ‘A merry Christmas to you!’”

* * * * *

The year 1820 was an era signalised, as will be remembered, by the many efforts of the revolutionary spirit which, at that time, broke forth, like ill-suppressed fire, throughout the greater part of the South of Europe.  In Italy, Naples had already raised the Constitutional standard, and her example was fast operating through the whole of that country.  Throughout Romagna, secret societies, under the name of Carbonari, had been organised, which waited but the word of their chiefs to break out into open insurrection.  We have seen from Lord Byron’s Journal in 1814, what intense interest he took in the last struggles of Revolutionary France under Napoleon; and his exclamations, “Oh for a Republic!—­’Brutus, thou sleepest!’” show the lengths to which, in theory at least, his political zeal extended.  Since then, he had but rarely turned his thoughts to politics; the tame, ordinary vicissitude of public affairs having but little in it to stimulate a mind like his, whose sympathies nothing short of a crisis seemed worthy to interest.  This the present state of Italy gave every promise of affording him; and, in addition to the great national cause itself, in which there was every thing that a lover of liberty, warm from the pages of Petrarch and Dante, could desire, he had also private ties and regards to enlist him socially in the contest.  The brother of Madame Guiccioli, Count Pietro Gamba, who had been passing some time at Rome and Naples, was now returned from his tour; and the friendly sentiments with which, notwithstanding a natural bias previously in the contrary direction, he at length learned to regard the noble lover of his sister, cannot better be described than in the words of his fair relative herself.

“At this time,” says Madame Guiccioli, “my beloved brother, Pietro, returned to Ravenna from Rome and Naples.  He had been prejudiced by some enemies of Lord Byron against his character, and my intimacy with him afflicted him greatly; nor had my letters succeeded in entirely destroying the evil impression which Lord Byron’s detractors had produced.  No sooner, however, had he seen and known him, than he became inspired with an interest in his favour, such as could not have been produced by mere exterior qualities, but was the result only of that union he saw in him of all that is most great and beautiful, as well in the heart as mind of man.  From that moment every former prejudice vanished, and the conformity of their opinions and studies contributed to unite them in a friendship, which only ended with their lives."[15]