“When I first got these attacks--they are of old standing now--I really fancied it was the ‘beginning of the end,’ and that it was all up with me. Now I take them as I do a passing fit of gout, and hope a few days will see me through it. “This is my excuse for not sending off the proof of ‘Tony’ before. I despatch it now, hoping it is all right, but beseeching you to see it is. I suppose you are right about Staffa, and that, like the sentinel who couldn’t see the Spanish fleet, I failed for the same reason.” During the first fourteen or fifteen years of Lever’s residence in Florence, Italy had been in the melting-pot. The Tuscan Revolution of 1848, the defeat of the Sardinians, and the abdication of Carlo Alberto in the following year, the earlier struggle of Garibaldi, the long series of troubles with Austria (ending in the defeat of the Austrians), feuds with the Papal States, insurrections in Sicily, the overthrow of the Pope’s government, the Neapolitan war, and, to crown all, triumphant brigandage, had made things lively for dwellers in Italy. The recognition by the Powers of Victor Emanuel as king of United Italy promised, early in 1862, a period of rest; but the expectations of peace-lovers were shattered, for the moment, by Garibaldi’s threatened march upon Rome. His defeat, his imprisonment in the fortress of Varignano, and his release, inspired hopes, well-founded, of the conclusion of the struggles (largely internecine) which had convulsed New Italy. Upon Garibaldi’s release Lever naturally sought out his distinguished Spezzian neighbour, and one morning he had the pleasure of entertaining him at breakfast. It was said that the British Minister at Florence was eager that the Italian patriot should be disabused of the favourable impressions he was supposed to entertain of the Irish revolutionary movement. The Vice-Consul at Spezzia found it necessary to explain to his guest that any overt expressions or acts of sympathy with Fenianism would be certain to alienate English sympathies. Garibaldi seemed to be somewhat surprised at this. He looked on England as a nation eager to applaud any patriotic or revolutionary movement. Lever is said--the authority is Major Dwyer--to have been unable to comprehend how a man so ignorant and childish as Garibaldi could have attained such vast influence over a people, and could have won such general renown. In his statements about his friend’s literary work or literary opinions, Major Dwyer is not a thoroughly safe guide. He had a weakness for patronising Lever, for declaring that he said or thought this or that-- usually something which coincided with the Major’s own opinion, and which showed the novelist at a disadvantage. Dwyer’s conviction was that Lever the talker* was better than Lever the writer, and that Lever the man was infinitely superior to both. Possibly the vice-consul was amused at the simplicity of Garibaldi when Anglo-Irish affairs were under discussion.