erston, who was glad enough to see the old
Governments of the little States tumbling to the ground, was rather alarmed
at the prospect of a United Italy, which would also be a Mediterranean
Power. Hitherto the honour of assisting Italy had belonged equally to him
and to Lord John. Henceforward, however, Lord John, who had been brought up
in the Fox tradition, and whose Italian sympathies had been fortified by
his wife's enthusiasm, definitely took the lead in determining England's
policy.

The aim of Cavour was to help the revolution as much as possible without
making it obvious to Europe that he was doing so; but, like everybody else,
Lord John had taken him at his word, and thought that the liberation of
Italy might be retarded by Garibaldi's departure from Sicily for the
mainland, till information reached him that in reality Piedmont was most
anxious nothing should hinder Garibaldi's attack upon Naples. It reached
him apparently in the following manner.

Cavour determined to appeal to the Russells personally through a secret
agent. With this object Mr. Lacaita [afterwards Sir James Lacaita], who had
been exiled from Naples for having helped Gladstone to write his famous
letters upon the state of the Neapolitan prisons, which Lacaita knew from
inside, was instructed to call upon Lord John in London and to tell him
that in spite of her official declaration, Piedmont was desperately anxious
that Garibaldi should drive the King of Naples from the throne; for
Garibaldi's extraordinary success in Sicily had made his failure on the
mainland far less likely, and Cavour was now certain that there was not
much power of resistance left in the Neapolitan kingdom. Lacaita, though
ill in bed, got up and went to deliver his message. He was told that Lord
John was closeted with the French and Neapolitan ambassadors and could not
see him. Lacaita guessed that Lord John was at that very moment talking
over the means of preventing Garibaldi's expedition, and he immediately
decided to ask for Lady John. When informed that she was seriously ill, he
insisted upon being taken up into her bedroom, and adjured her for the love
of Italy to get Lord John away from the ambassadors at once. A scribbled
note begging her husband to come to her immediately brought him upstairs in
some alarm. And there he learnt from Lacaita that Victor Emmanuel's letter
of July 25th was a blind, that united Italy must be made now or never, and
that he would never b