“But the Neapolitans have betrayed themselves and all the world; and those who would have given their blood for Italy can now only give her their tears.

“Some day or other, if dust holds together, I have been enough in the secret (at least in this part of the country) to cast perhaps some little light upon the atrocious treachery which has replunged Italy into barbarism:  at present, I have neither the time nor the temper.  However the real Italians are not to blame; merely the scoundrels at the heel of the boot, which the Hun now wears, and will trample them to ashes with for their servility.  I have risked myself with the others here, and how far I may or may not be compromised is a problem at this moment.  Some of them, like Craigengelt, would ’tell all, and more than all, to save themselves.’  But, come what may, the cause was a glorious one, though it reads at present as if the Greeks had run away from Xerxes.  Happy the few who have only to reproach themselves with believing that these rascals were less ‘rascaille’ than they proved!—­Here in Romagna, the efforts were necessarily limited to preparations and good intentions, until the Germans were fairly engaged in equal warfare—­as we are upon their very frontiers, without a single fort or hill nearer than San Marino.  Whether ’hell will be paved with’ those ‘good intentions,’ I know not; but there will probably be good store of Neapolitans to walk upon the pavement, whatever may be its composition.  Slabs of lava from their mountain, with the bodies of their own damned souls for cement, would be the fittest causeway for Satan’s ‘Corso.’”

* * * * *

LETTER 423.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Ravenna, May 10. 1821.

“I have just got your packet.  I am obliged to Mr. Bowles, and Mr. Bowles is obliged to me, for having restored him to good-humour.  He is to write, and you to publish, what you please,—­motto and subject.  I desire nothing but fair play for all parties.  Of course, after the new tone of Mr. Bowles, you will not publish my defence of Gilchrist:  it would be brutal to do so after his urbanity, for it is rather too rough, like his own attack upon Gilchrist.  You may tell him what I say there of his Missionary (it is praised, as it deserves).  However, and if there are any passages not personal to Bowles, and yet bearing upon the question, you may add them to the reprint (if it is reprinted) of my first Letter to you.  Upon this consult Gifford; and, above all, don’t let any thing be added which can personally affect Mr. Bowles.

     “In the enclosed notes, of course what I say of the democracy of
     poetry cannot apply to Mr. Bowles, but to the Cockney and water
     washing-tub schools.