ies of Garibaldi? So fine a fellow, and so mangy a following, it
would be hard to find. The opportunity for all the blatant balderdash
of shopkeeping eloquence, of that high "Falootin" style so popular over
the Atlantic, of those grand-sounding periods about freedom and love
of country, was not to be lost by a set of people who, in all their
enthusiasm for Garibaldi, are intently bent on making themselves
foreground figures in the tableau that should have been filled by
himself alone.

"Sir Francis Burdett call _you_ his friend!--as well call a Bug his
bedfellow!" said the sturdy old yeoman, whose racy English I should like
to borrow, to characterise the stupid incongruity between Garibaldi and
his worshippers. It is not easy to conceive anything finer, simpler,
more thoroughly unaffected, or more truly dignified, than the man
himself. His noble head; his clear, honest, brown eye; his finely-traced
mouth, beautiful as a woman's, and only strung up to sternness when
anything ignoble or mean had outraged him; and, last of all, his voice
contains a fascination perfectly irresistible, allied, as you knew and
felt these graces were, with a thoroughly pure, untarnished nature. The
true measure of the man lies in the fact that, though his life has been
a series of the boldest and most daring achievements, his courage is
about the very last quality uppermost in your mind when you meet him.
It is of the winning softness of his look and manner, his kind
thoughtfulness for others, his sincere pity for all suffering, his
gentleness, his modesty, his manly sense of brotherhood with the very
humblest of the men who have loved him, that you think: these are the
traits that throw all his heroism into shadow; and all the glory of the
conqueror pales before the simple virtues of the man.

He never looked to more advantage than in that humble life of Caprera,
where people came and went--some, old and valued friends, whose presence
warmed up their host's heart; others, mere passing acquaintances, or,
as it might be, not even that; worshippers or curiosity-seekers--living
where and how they could in that many-roomed small house; diving into
the kitchen to boil their coffee; sallying out to the garden to pluck
their radishes; down to the brook for a cress, or to the seaside to
catch a fish,--all more or less busy in the midst of a strange
idleness; for there was not--beyond providing for the mere wants of the
day--anything to be done. The s