with intense interest, and hatred for the Austrian was warm in every
bosom. But they had slender hopes; they knew that the Neapolitans would
offer no fit resistance to the regular German troops, and that the
overthrow of the constitution in Naples would act as a decisive blow
against all struggles for liberty in Italy.

We have seen the rise and progress of reform. But the Holy Alliance was
alive and active in those days, and few could dream of the peaceful
triumph of liberty. It seemed then that the armed assertion of freedom
in the South of Europe was the only hope of the liberals, as, if it
prevailed, the nations of the north would imitate the example. Happily
the reverse has proved the fact. The countries accustomed to the
exercise of the privileges of freemen, to a limited extent, have
extended, and are extending, these limits. Freedom and knowledge have
now a chance of proceeding hand in hand; and, if it continue thus, we
may hope for the durability of both. Then, as I have said--in
1821--Shelley, as well as every other lover of liberty, looked upon the
struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of the destinies of the world,
probably for centuries to come. The interest he took in the progress of
affairs was intense. When Genoa declared itself free, his hopes were at
their highest. Day after day he read the bulletins of the Austrian army,
and sought eagerly to gather tokens of its defeat. He heard of the
revolt of Genoa with emotions of transport. His whole heart and soul
were in the triumph of the cause. We were living at Pisa at that time;
and several well-informed Italians, at the head of whom we may place the
celebrated Vacca, were accustomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes
from Shelley: they did not find such for the despair they too generally
experienced, founded on contempt for their southern countrymen.

While the fate of the progress of the Austrian armies then invading