But my father's sympathies were all his life long on the side of the weak and oppressed, and in this particular instance he came in personal contact with the friends and associates of Orsini, if not with Orsini himself (which, indeed, I am under the impression was the case), so that the whole tone of his surroundings was anti-Napoleonic. Felice Orsini must have been personally known to many of the advanced thinkers in England, for I notice that in the winter of 1856 he was lecturing at Woolwich (and probably elsewhere) on "Austrian and Papal Tyranny in Italy." Those who knew him, even those who could not approve his deed, yet honoured and revered him as a hero and a martyr. My father spoke of him as "the noble, the brave, the true-hearted Orsini." In 1859, writing of him: "One year since and his blood was scarce dry! Bernard was a prisoner; Allsop a fugitive. Now Orsini lives: the spirit of his greatness passed into a hundred others, and the dead hero lives. Priests in their masses say, 'Pray for the memory of the dead;' we say, 'Work for the memory of the dead!' Orsini needs a monument o'er his grave. He is buried in the hearts of the freemen of Europe, and his monument should be indestructible Republicanism throughout France, Italy, Hungary, and Poland." Alas! for my father's dreams of a Republic for those striving and oppressed nations. Poland still lies at the feet of Russia, Hungary is held in the iron grasp of Imperial Austria, and but a year or so ago Republican France and Monarchical Italy were ready to fly at one another's throats. The result of the prosecution of Mr Truelove, which is told more fully at the end of this chapter by an abler pen than mine, was the abandonment by the Government of all proceedings on certain conditions; and although Mr Truelove, as well as his friends, would have preferred a trial and acquittal to a withdrawal on the conditions accepted by his counsel, nevertheless it was an undoubted triumph for the principle of the liberty of the press and free discussion. When at length the struggle ended it was proposed to raise a sum of money to compensate Mr Truelove for the loss he must have sustained in his business, but this Mr Truelove, with true public spirit, chivalrously refused.