ant to be a servant to anybody. However, I
do not believe that you will ever get rid of the Austrians, even if the
French assist you. The Pope for certain reasons of his own favours the
Austrians, and will exert all the powers of priestcraft to keep them in
Italy. Alas, alas, there is no hope for Italy! Italy, the most
beautiful country in the world, the birth-place of the cleverest people,
whose very pedlars can learn to speak Welsh, is not only enslaved, but
destined always to remain enslaved."

"Do not say so, signore," said the Italian, with a kind of groan.

"But I do say so," said I, "and what is more, one whose shoe-strings,
were he alive, I should not he worthy to untie, one of your mighty ones,
has said so. Did you ever hear of Vincenzio Filicaia?"

"I believe I have, signore; did he not write a sonnet on Italy?"

"He did," said I; "would you like to hear it?

"Very much, signore."

I repeated Filicaia's glorious sonnet on Italy, and then asked him if he
understood it.

"Only in part, signore; for it is composed in old Tuscan, in which I am
not much versed. I believe I should comprehend it better if you were to
say it in English."

"Do say it in English," said the landlady and her daughter: "we should so
like to hear it in English."

"I will repeat a translation," said I, "which I made when a boy, which
though far from good, has, I believe, in it something of the spirit of
the original:--

"O Italy! on whom dark Destiny
The dangerous gift of beauty did bestow,
From whence thou hast that ample dower of wo,
Which on thy front thou bear'st so visibly.
Would thou hadst beauty less or strength more high,
That more of fear, and less of love might show,
He who now blasts him in thy beauty's glow,
Or woos thee with a zeal that makes thee die;
Then down from Alp no more would torrents rage
Of armed men, nor Gallic coursers hot
In Po's ensanguin'd tide their thirst assuage;
Nor girt with iron, not thine own, I wot,
Wouldst thou the fight by hands of strangers wage
Victress or vanquish'd slavery still thy lot."

CHAPTER XXV

Lacing-up High-lows--The Native Village--Game Leg--Croppies Lie
Down--Keeping Faith--Processions--Croppies Get Up--Daniel O'Connell.

I slept in the chamber communicating with the room in which I had dined.
The chamber was spacious and airy, the bed first-rate, and myself rather
tired, so that no one will be surp