the poorer classes were plunged.  Forthwith, out came a bushel-basket of edicts and appeals on behalf of these poor children of the sun.  He visited the orphan asylum and found that eighty per cent. of the inmates died of starvation.  One nurse had to provide for the wants of four infants.  Garibaldi wrote off an address to the ladies of Palermo, in which he implored them to interest themselves in the wretched little beings created in the image of God, at the sight of whose wasted and puny bodies he, an old soldier, had wept.  He had money and food distributed every morning to the most destitute, at the gates of the royal palace, where he lived with a frugality that scandalised the aged servants of royalty whom he kept, out of kindness, at their posts.  Theoretically, he disapproved of indiscriminate almsgiving, but in the misery caused by the recent bombardment, such theories could not be strictly applied, or, at any rate, Garibaldi was not the man to so apply them; whence it happened that though, as de facto head of the State, he allowed himself a civil list of eight francs a day, the morning had never far advanced before his pockets were empty, and he had to borrow small sums from his friends, which next morning were faithfully repaid.

When he walked about the town, the women pressed forward to touch the hem of his poncho, and made their children kneel to receive his blessing.  On one occasion a convent of nuns, from the youngest novice to the elderly abbess, insisted on giving him the kiss of peace.  An idolatry which would have made anyone else ridiculous; but Garibaldi, being altogether simple and unselfconscious, was above ridicule.  One of the good works that he initiated was the transformation of the Foundling Hospital, of which the large funds were turned to little account, into a Military School under the direction of his best officers.  In less than a month the school could turn out two smart battalions, and there were few mornings that the Dictator did not go to watch the boys at their drill.  He encouraged them with the promise that before long he would lead them himself to the wars.

Such actions smell sweeter from the dust, than the old story of the antagonism that sprang up in those days between Garibaldi and Cavour, between Crispi and La Farina.  This dualism, as it was called, was the fruit of a mutual distrust, which, however much to be deplored, was not to be avoided.  Although Cavour had a far juster idea of Garibaldi than that entertained by his entourage, he was nevertheless haunted by the fear that the general’s revolutionary friends would persuade him to depart from his programme of ‘Italy and Victor Emmanuel,’ and embark upon some adventure of a republican complexion.  He was also afraid that the Government of the Dictator would, by its unconventional methods, discredit the Italian cause in the eyes of European statesmen.  These reasons caused him to desire and to endeavour to bring about the immediate annexation of Sicily to