May 13, Louis Napoleon himself arrived to take the nominal command of his army. On the 20th the hostile armies met in their first action at Montebello, and the next five weeks saw five more conflicts, every one of which ended in favour of the allies. Palestro, though but a combat on a limited scale, was perhaps the one most grateful to the Piedmontese pride, since there their own king, Victor Emmanuel, commanded in person. Magenta that enabled the allied Sovereigns to enter Milan in triumph. Solferino compelled the Austrians to renounce all idea of arresting the progress of their foes in the open field, and once more to trust for safety to the impregnable strength of their Quadrilateral.

Cavour's projects, as was natural, had grown with the rapidity and completeness of success; and he was revolving plans for profiting to the utmost by the recent events, when, in the second week of July, intelligence reached him and his royal master that Napoleon had invited the Austrian Emperor to a conference at Villafranca, and had concluded with him a treaty of peace. In all probability, Napoleon's reasons were really those which he alleged. The late battles had cost him many thousand men, and he saw reason to apprehend that, if the war were protracted, the other states of Germany might come to the support of Austria, and that thus the war might spread over all Europe. Still, however cogent such arguments may have been, it was a strange exercise of his superior power thus to retire from the war without the slightest notice of his intentions to his ally. Nor, though the treaty gave all Lombardy, with the exception of Mantua and Peschièra, to Sardinia as the prize of war, could Victor Emmanuel be insensible to the slight put upon him, or forbear to show his feelings in the very act of adding his signature.

He had, however, no alternative but to agree with a good grace to what he could not undo. It was manifest that his kingdom could not continue the contest single-handed; manifest also that he had gained a great deal. A single stroke of the pen had doubled his dominions; and Cavour could not be less sensible than he of the weight of these considerations. But at the same time he felt that his position as a Constitutional Minister and the ostensible adviser of his King, made his position and duty different from that of his master. If he signed the peace he made himself responsible, not only for its conditions, but for the very act of concluding it; and to this he was too deeply mortified to consent. feared that 'all that he had done for the union of the Italians might be compromised;' and, rather than appear to a single

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one of his countrymen a party to a retrograde movement, he resigned his office.

His retirement is almost the only act in which M. de Mazade is inclined to question his judgment. But even he cannot deny that it showed a perfect agreement with the feelings of all his countrymen. Their disappointment and indignation at the treaty of Villafranca was universal throughout Italy. And their confidence in his patriotism and integrity, little as it needed increase, was augmented when they found how fully he shared the general feeling.

Cavour was a man far above all trickery; and we have no doubt that, when he resigned office, he did so in good faith, without a thought of returning to it. But to lookers-on,

especially in foreign countries, it was clear from the first that his withdrawal from public life could not be permanent or even long. In fact, Villafranca was but a truce, not a peace. Even in concluding it Louis Napoleon had let fall the significant words,Now we shall see what the Italians can do unaided.' And very few weeks elapsed before they began to show both their power and their resolution to take their affairs into their own hands. In every State north of the Tiber popular assemblies overthrew the existing governments, and made new arrangements which were avowedly only intended to be temporary, and to prepare the way for annexation to Piedmont. The enthusiastic leader Farini even formed a new state, Emilia, out of the old Duchy of Bologna and the Legations which had hitherto formed the most important portion of the papal territory. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, because he was a prince of Austrian blood, was driven from Florence; and the great Florentine noble, Ricasoli, justly extolled by M. de Mazade as, 'next to Cavour, the chief author of the Italian transformation,' rejecting with noble disdain all personal temptations, declared openly for adding that splendid province to the new dominion of Victor Emmanuel.

To provide for the reception of such a vast addition. of territory and subjects was by itself a task requiring the highest exertions and attributes of statesmanship. To organise a government for the territories already acquired; to fuse the old rivals, Lombardy and Piedmont, in harmonious union into one compact and cordial whole, was one which required in a still greater degree administrative capacity of the highest quality, united with consummate address and that art of inspiring confidence which, though among the rarest, is, at the same time, one of the most indispensable endow

ments for a true ruler of men. But Cavour's successor, La Marmora, was a soldier, not a statesman; and, though deservedly beloved by the Sardinian army, proud of the laurels which under him it had won in the Crimea, was but little known to the peaceful citizens of Turin, and not at all to the Milanese or the Florentines. Autumn had hardly begun before the general voice began to demand the return to power of the only man who could unite in harmonious action the present and the past, and pave the way for a more glorious, though at the same time a more difficult future. And thus in January 1860, Cavour once more became Prime Minister of what was still entitled the kingdom of Sardinia.

The work for which it may be said that he was thus recalled to power now proceeded rapidly. The arrangements consequent on the overthrow of the old authority in Tuscany and the smaller states were avowedly temporary; and the ultimate decision on their future government was left to the people themselves. Their votes were taken, at what it had lately become the fashion to call a plébiscite, in March, and an overwhelming majority in every province resolved to solicit Victor Emmanuel to receive them as his subjects.

But there was another vote also to be taken. Napoleon's demand of Savoy and Nice had been tacitly abandoned at Villafranca but the further addition to the kingdom of Sardinia led to its revival; and Cavour, having once consented to the cession, felt it impossible to deny that recent events had strengthened France's plea for requiring it; and that, if it had been worth while to make it, when it was the price of but a single province, it was an infinitely better bargain when all Italy north of the Tiber was to be purchased by it. The moment, therefore, that the claim was renewed, he granted it; and he had but little difficulty in inducing the Piedmontese Chambers to adopt his view and ratify the sacrifice. And, if any justification of his policy were needed, it might be found in the fact that the transfer of their allegiance to France was not unwillingly submitted to by the Savoyards and citizens of Nice themselves. For their wishes also were consulted by a plébiscite, and there the majority in favour of annexation to France was still more overwhelming than that by which the Tuscans and Emilians had decided to range themselves under the Sardinian banner.

But, extensive and important as were these additions to his Sovereign's territories, Fortune had yet a gift in store for Cavour of still greater magnitude and value. It may well be called a gift, since he in no way contributed to it, save by the

most passive acquiescence. The government of the King of Naples had long been a by-word for tyranny and cruelty. It had more than once driven the people to the very point of revolt. And now, the example of the Northern States kindled the slumbering fires of discontent from the Garigliano to Cape Passaro; at the different cities in Sicily insurrections were organised, the spirit of which rapidly spread to the mainland; and islanders and citizens of the continental towns alike took up arms to relieve themselves of the Bourbon yoke, and to unite their fortunes to those of their brethren of the North. They were not long in finding an ally and leader from the North. Twelve years before, Garibaldi had sought to head a similar movement, but his enterprise had been premature. It was with difficulty that he himself escaped to Caprera, where he had since been living inactive and impatient. At the beginning of the previous year, he had desired to take part in the war which was approaching; but Cavour had feared that a coadjutor so notorious for republican principles would alarm more than his reputation for ability as a leader of irregular troops would attract; and he returned to his island, to wait for a more favourable opportunity, or for allies with fewer scruples.

He found it now in the Sicilian insurrection. At the first intelligence of the outbreak he began to raise a volunteer force for the support of the insurgents; and in the first week of May he landed at Marsala, where he was received with open arms by men sadly in want of a leader, and at once began operations against the Royal troops. Cavour was so entirely free from all connivance at his enterprise, that Garibaldi's last act before he set sail was to write a letter to Victor Emmanuel couched in a tone of resentful sarcasm against the Minister for his cession of Nice, the city in which Garibaldi had been born. Absurd as it may seem, he actually hoped, if he should succeed in his undertaking, to induce the King to dismiss his great Minister, and to accept him as his successor; for he had renounced his republicanism, and from the first avowed his object to be to add the kingdom of the Two Sicilies to that of Sardinia. As Cavour was wholly unconnected with his undertaking, we may dispense with dwelling upon it. Suffice it to say that a campaign of a few weeks sufficed to clear Sicily of the Neapolitan troops; that before the end of the summer the brave Condottiere found himself strong enough to cross over to the mainland, and march northwards upon Naples. He was joined everywhere by the citizens of the towns and peasantry of the districts through which he passed.

Francis II. fled at his approach. On September 8, Garibaldi entered his beautiful capital as its master, and, before the end of the next month, the Sardinian Government, professing to regard the Pope's employment of French troops as a justification to all Italians for making war upon him, sent an army into the Papal territories which virtually terminated the contest by inflicting a decisive defeat on the French General Lamoricière. A few days afterwards Victor Emmanuel entered Naples in triumph, where Garibaldi hailed him as 'King of Italy,' and the monarch in brief emphatic terms acknowledged the services of the brave soldier, who, in thus saluting him, acknowledged himself to be his subject.

Italy was now almost one united kingdom. The city of Rome and Venetia were the only districts remaining in which the sovereign authority of Victor Emmanuel was not recognised. And Garibaldi, flushed with success, was eager to make a dash on the cities of both Pope and Doge, and thus to terminate the contest in a single campaign. He was so little either of a general or of a statesman, that he was quite unable to estimate or even to see the obstacles to such enterprise; and it is not the least triumph of Cavour's sagacity and address that he was able to curb and control his hotheaded enthusiasm without wholly breaking with him, or giving him any ground to complain that the services which he had really rendered to the Italian cause were overlooked or repaid with ingratitude. Cavour, however, had not only a more comprehensive foresight, but, what was still more important, a far higher sense of responsibility. Though he did not conceal his conviction that 'no city but Rome could be the capital of Italy,' he was yet aware that any precipitation on his part might compel France to place herself across his path, and bind Napoleon to the part of champion of the Pope, which he was secretly not unwilling to lay aside. Nor was the French Emperor the only potentate whose susceptibilities he felt it necessary to avoid unduly wounding. Cialdini had not led his army against_Ancona without provoking warm remonstrances even from Prussia and Russia, though neither the King nor the Czar acknowledged allegiance to the Pope. And, if these princes felt bound to show an interest in the position of Pius IX., much more had Cavour to fear bringing on the new kingdom the hostility of those potentates who recognised him as their spiritual sovereign. It was, in his view, indispensable that the great body of the Roman Catholics in Italy and elsewhere should not see in the reunion of Rome with Italy the source of the subjection of the