Meanwhile, love me all you can; let me feel, that,
amid the fearful agitations of the world, there are pure hands, with
healthful, even pulse, stretched out toward me, if I claim their
grasp.
I feel profoundly for Mazzini; at moments I am tempted to say, "Cursed
with every granted prayer,"--so cunning is the daemon. He is become
the inspiring soul of his people. He saw Rome, to which all his hopes
through life tended, for the first time as a Roman citizen, and to
become in a few days its ruler. He has animated, he sustains her to a
glorious effort, which, if it fails, this time, will not in the age.
His country will be free. Yet to me it would be so dreadful to cause
all this bloodshed, to dig the graves of such martyrs.
Then Rome is being destroyed; her glorious oaks; her villas, haunts of
sacred beauty, that seemed the possession of the world forever,--the
villa of Raphael, the villa of Albani, home of Winkelmann, and
the best expression of the ideal of modern Rome, and so many other
sanctuaries of beauty,--all must perish, lest a foe should level his
musket from their shelter. _I_ could not, could not!
I know not, dear friend, whether I ever shall get home across that
great ocean, but here in Rome I shall no longer wish to live.
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