“Sons of Rome, awake!”

Yes, awake, and let no police-officer put you again to sleep in prison, as has happened to those who were called by the Marseillaise.

Affairs look well.  The king of Sardinia has at last, though with evident distrust and heartlessness, entered the upward path in a way that makes it difficult to return.  The Duke of Modena, the most senseless of all these ancient gentlemen, after publishing a declaration, which made him more ridiculous than would the bitterest pasquinade penned by another, that he would fight to the death against reform, finds himself obliged to lend an ear as to the league for the customs; and if he joins that, other measures follow of course.  Austria trembles; and, in fine, cannot sustain the point of Ferrara.  The king of Naples, after having shed much blood, for which he has a terrible account to render, (ah! how many sad, fair romances are to tell already about the Calabrian difficulties!) still finds the spirit fomenting in his people; he cannot put it down.  The dragon’s teeth are sown, and the Lazzaroni may be men yet!  The Swiss affairs have taken the right direction, and good will ensue, if other powers act with decent honesty, and think of healing the wounds of Switzerland, rather than merely of tying her down, so that she cannot annoy them.

In Rome, here, the new Council is inaugurated, and elections have given tolerable satisfaction.  Already, struggles ended in other places begin to be renewed here, as to gas-lights, introduction of machinery, &c.  We shall see at the end of the winter how they have gone on.  At any rate, the wants of the people are in some measure represented; and already the conduct of those who have taken to themselves so large a portion of the loaves and fishes on the very platform supposed to be selected by Jesus for a general feeding of his sheep, begins to be the subject of spoken as well as whispered animadversion.  Torlonia is assailed in his bank, Campana amid his urns or his Monte di Picti; but these assaults have yet to be verified.

On the day when the Council was to be inaugurated, great preparations were made by representatives of other parts of Italy, and also of foreign nations friendly to the cause of progress.  It was considered to represent the same fact as the feast of the 12th of September in Tuscany,—­the dawn of an epoch when the people shall find their wants and aspirations represented and guarded.  The Americans showed a warm interest; the gentlemen subscribing to buy a flag, the United States having none before in Rome, and the ladies meeting to make it.  The same distinguished individual, indeed, who at Florence made a speech to prevent “the American eagle being taken out on so trifling an occasion,” with similar perspicuity and superiority of view, on the present occasion, was anxious to prevent “rash demonstrations, which might embroil the United States with Austria”; but the rash youth here present rushed on, ignorant