Certainly if I don’t guess ‘the Sphinx’ right, some of your English guessers in the ‘Times’ and elsewhere fail also, as events prove.  The clever ‘Prince-Napoleon-for-Central-Italy’ guess,[67] for instance, has just fallen through, by declaration of the ‘Moniteur.’  Most absurd it was always.  At one time the Prince might have taken the crown by acclamation.  He was almost rude about it when he was in Tuscany.  And even after the peace, members of the present Government were not averse, were much the contrary indeed.  At that time the autonomy was still dear, we had not made up our minds to the fusion.  Now, e altra cosa, and to imagine that a man like the French Emperor would have waited till now, producing, by the opportunities he has given, the present complication, in order to impose the Prince, is absurd on the very face of it.

While standers-by guess, the comfort is that circumstances ripen.  We are in spirits about our Italy.  The dignity, the constancy, the calm, are admirable, as the unanimity of the people is wonderful.  Even the contadini have rallied to the Government, and the cry of enthusiasm to which the cross of Savoy was uncovered in the market place of Siena yesterday was a thrilling thing.  Also we will fight, be it understood, whenever fighting shall be necessary.  At present, the right arm of Austria is broken; she cannot hold the sword since Solferino, at least in central Italy.  Let those who doubt our debt to France remember where we were last year, and see what our political life is now—­real, vivid, unhindered!  Our moral qualities are our own, but our practical opportunities come from another; we could not have made them by force of moral qualities, great as those are allowed to be.  And how striking the growth of this people since 1848.  Massimo d’ Azeglio said to Robert and me, ’It is ‘48 over again with matured actors.’  But it is even more than that:  it is ’48 over again with regenerated actors.  All internal jealousies at an end, all suspicions quenched, all selfish policies dissolved.  Florence forgets herself for Italy.  This is grand.  Would that England, that pattern of moral nations, would forget herself for the sake of something or someone beyond. That would be grand.

I wish you were here, my dear Mr. Chorley, since I am wishing in vain, though we are almost at the close of our stay in this pretty country.  We have a villa with beautiful sights from all the windows; and there, on the hill opposite, live Mr. and Mrs. Story, and within a stone’s throw, in a villino, lives the poor old lion Landor, who, being sorely buffeted by his family at Fiesole, far beyond ‘kissing with tears’ (though Robert did what he could), took refuge with us at Casa Guidi one day, broken-hearted and in wrath.  He stays here while we stay, and then goes with us to Florence, where Robert has received the authorisation of his English friends to settle him in comfort in an apartment of his own, with my