Oh, Savoy has given me pain:  and I would rather for the world’s sake that a great action had remained out of reach of the hypothetical whispers of depreciators.  I would rather not hear Robert say, for instance:  ’It was a great action; but he has taken eighteenpence for it, which is a pity.’  I don’t think this judgment fair—­and much worse judgments are passed than that, which is very painful.  But, after all, this thing may have been a necessary duty on L.N.’s part, and I can understand that it was so.  For this loss of the Italians, that is not to be dwelt on; while for the Savoyards, none knew better than Cavour (not even L.N.) the leaning of those populations towards France for years back; it has been an inconvenient element of his government.  Whether there are or are not natural frontiers, there are natural barriers, and the Alps hinder trade and make direct influence difficult; and what the popular vote would be nobody here doubted.  Be sure that nobody did in Switzerland.  The Swiss have been insincere, it seems to me—­talking of terror when they thought chiefly of territory.  But I feel tenderly for poor heroic Garibaldi, who has suffered, he and his minority.  He is not a man of much brain; which makes the subject the more cruel to him.  But I can’t write of Garibaldi this morning, so anxious we are after an unpleasant despatch yesterday.  He is a hero, and has led a forlorn hope out to Sicily, to succeed for Italy, or to fail for himself.  It’s ‘imprudence,’ if he fails:  if otherwise, who shall praise him enough? it’s salvation and glory.

* * * * *

To Miss E.F.  Haworth

[Rome], 28 Via del Tritone:  May 18, 1860 [postmark].

My dearest Fanny,—­It seems to me that you have drunk so much England, which cheers and inebriates, as to have forgotten your Italian friends.  Here have I been waiting with my load of gratitude, till my shoulders ache under it, not knowing to what address to carry it!  Sarianna sent me one address of your London lodgings, with the satisfactory addition that you were about to move immediately.  You really might have written to me before, unkindest and falsest of Fannies!  Or else (understand) you should not have sent me those graceful and suggestive drawings, for which only now I am able to thank you.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  It was very kind of you to let me have them.

Then, pray how did you get my ‘Poems before Congress’?  Was I not to send you an order?  Here I send one at least, whether you scorn my gift or not; and by this sign you will inherit also an ‘Aurora Leigh.’

Yes, I expected nothing better from the ‘British public,’ which, strictly conforming itself to the higher civilisation of the age, gives sympathy only where it gives ’the belt.’[87] As the favorite hero says in his last eloquent letter, ’In all my actions, whether in private or public life, may I be worthy of having had the honor ... of a notice in the “Times,"’ he concludes ‘of the abuse of the “Saturday Review"’ &c., &c., say I.