sagreeable and depressing to read them.

Passing into Tuscany, I found the liberty of the press just
established, and a superior preparation to make use of it. The _Alba_,
the _Patria_, were begun, and have been continued with equal judgment
and spirit. Their aim is to educate the youth, to educate the
lower people; they see that this is to be done by promoting thought
fearlessly, yet urge temperance in action, while the time is yet so
difficult, and many of its signs dubious. They aim at breaking down
those barriers between the different states of Italy, relics of a
barbarous state of polity, artificially kept up by the craft of her
foes. While anxious not to break down what is really native to the
Italian character,--defences and differences that give individual
genius a chance to grow and the fruits of each region to ripen in
their natural way,--they aim at a harmony of spirit as to measures
of education and for the affairs of business, without which Italy can
never, as one nation, present a front strong enough to resist foreign
robbery, and for want of which so much time and talent are wasted
here, and internal development almost wholly checked.

There is in Tuscany a large corps of enlightened minds, well prepared
to be the instructors, the elder brothers and guardians, of the lower
people, and whose hearts burn to fulfil that noble office. Before, it
had been almost impossible to them, for the reasons I have named in
speaking of Lombardy; but during these last four months that the way
has been opened by the freedom of the press, and establishment of the
National Guard,--so valuable, first of all, as giving occasion for
public meetings and free interchange of thought between the different
classes,--it is surprising how much light they have been able to
diffuse.

A Bolognese, to whom I observed, "How can you be so full of trust when
all your hopes depend, not on the recognition of principles and wants
throughout the people, but on the life of one mortal man?" replied:
"Ah! but you don't consider that his life gives us a chance to effect
that recognition. If Pius IX. be spared to us five years, it will
be impossible for his successors ever to take a backward course. Our
nation is of a genius so vivacious,--we are unhappy, but not stupid,
we Italians,--we can learn as much in two months as other nations in
twenty years." This seemed to me no brag when I returned to Tuscany
and saw the great development and diffusio