the ethics of political assassination; civilisation has decided against it, and history proves its usual failure to promote the desired object.  What benefit did the Confederate cause derive from the assassination of the good President Lincoln, or the cause of Russian liberty from that of Alexander II.?  What will Anarchy gain by the murder of Carnot?  It is certain, however, that never were men more convinced that they were executing a wild kind of justice than were the men who plotted against Napoleon III.  They looked upon him as one of themselves who had turned traitor.  There is a great probability that, in his early days when he was playing at conspiracy in Italy, he was actually enrolled as a Carbonaro.  At all events, he had conspired for Italian freedom, and afterwards, to serve his own selfish interests, he extinguished it in Rome.  The temporal power of the Pope was kept alive through him.

A true account of the attempts on Napoleon’s life will never be written, because the only persons who were able and willing to throw light on the subject, ex-police agents and their kind, are authorities whose word is worth a very limited acceptance.  It is pretty sure that there were more plots than the public ever knew of, and that in some cases the plotters were disposed of summarily.  Most of them were poor, ignorant creatures, but in January 1858 an attempt was made by a man of an entirely different stamp, Felice Orsini.

Born at Meldola in Romagna in 1819, he was of the true Romagnol type in mind and body; daring, resourceful, intolerant of control.  From his earliest youth all his actions had but one object, the liberation of his country.  His youthful brain was enflamed by Alfieri and Foscolo, who remained his favourite authors.  He hated Austria well, and he hated the Papal government as no one but one of its own subjects could hate it.  ‘When the French landed in Italy’ (he told his judges) ’it was hoped that they were come as friends, but they proved the worst of enemies.  For a time they were repulsed, then they resumed the cloak of friendship, but only to wait for reinforcements.  When these arrived they returned to the assault, a thousand against ten, and we were judicially assassinated.’  A succinct and true narrative.

During the republic Orsini was sent to Ancona, where anarchy had broken out; by vigorous measures he restored perfect order.  In 1854 he was arrested in Hungary and condemned to death, but he escaped from Mantua under romantic circumstances and reached England, where the story of his audacious flight won for him many sympathisers.  He was often seen in society.  On one occasion he was asked to meet Prince Lucien Buonaparte.  Orsini knew Mazzini, but he was impatient of his mystical leanings, and he disapproved of such enterprises as Pisacane’s, by which, as he thought, twenty or thirty men were sacrificed here or there without anything coming of it.  He finally repudiated Mazzini’s leadership, and in March 1857 he wrote