fs to break out
into open insurrection. We have seen from Lord Byron's Journal in 1814,
what intense interest he took in the last struggles of Revolutionary
France under Napoleon; and his exclamations, "Oh for a
Republic!--'Brutus, thou sleepest!'" show the lengths to which, in
theory at least, his political zeal extended. Since then, he had but
rarely turned his thoughts to politics; the tame, ordinary vicissitude
of public affairs having but little in it to stimulate a mind like his,
whose sympathies nothing short of a crisis seemed worthy to interest.
This the present state of Italy gave every promise of affording him;
and, in addition to the great national cause itself, in which there was
every thing that a lover of liberty, warm from the pages of Petrarch and
Dante, could desire, he had also private ties and regards to enlist him
socially in the contest. The brother of Madame Guiccioli, Count Pietro
Gamba, who had been passing some time at Rome and Naples, was now
returned from his tour; and the friendly sentiments with which,
notwithstanding a natural bias previously in the contrary direction, he
at length learned to regard the noble lover of his sister, cannot better
be described than in the words of his fair relative herself.

"At this time," says Madame Guiccioli, "my beloved brother, Pietro,
returned to Ravenna from Rome and Naples. He had been prejudiced by some
enemies of Lord Byron against his character, and my intimacy with him
afflicted him greatly; nor had my letters succeeded in entirely
destroying the evil impression which Lord Byron's detractors had
produced. No sooner, however, had he seen and known him, than he became
inspired with an interest in his favour, such as could not have been
produced by mere exterior qualities, but was the result only of that
union he saw in him of all that is most great and beautiful, as well in
the heart as mind of man. From that moment every former prejudice
vanished, and the conformity of their opinions and studies contributed
to unite them in a friendship, which only ended with their lives."[15]

The young Gamba, who was, at this time, but twenty years of age, with a
heart full of all those dreams of the regeneration of Italy, which not
only the example of Naples, but the spirit working beneath the surface
all around him, inspired, had, together with his father, who was still
in the prime of life, become enrolled in the secret bands now organising
throughout Romagna