The general movement toward liberty that shook Europe in the nineteenth century had not been without its effect, both in Naples and Sicily, as may easily be supposed, considering the harsh rule which the fiery southerners had been forced to endure so long. Ferdinand had succeeded in crushing one violent outbreak in 1848; but beneath the ashes the fire still smouldered, and the inward ferment was constantly increased by the extreme measures to which “Bomba,”[1] as the King was popularly called, resorted, to maintain and strengthen his position. He ruled with a despotism and intolerance that suggested the worst days of the Inquisition. The prisons were full of political “criminals,” whose only crime was the holding of liberal views, or the suspicion of doing so, and these victims were treated with such revolting cruelty as to rouse the horror of the civilized world. In spite of these things, however, Bomba was not without some good qualities. In private life he was both just and temperate, simple in his habits, a good husband and father. He was twice married. His first wife, to whom he was united two years after his accession to the throne, was the Princess Maria Christina of Sardinia—Italy’s “Queen Dagmar”—an angel of goodness and piety. The people called her Saint Christina even during her lifetime, and she was afterward canonized by the Church of Rome. Such a woman could not but exert a beneficial influence over her royal husband; but it was unfortunately of short duration, for she died in 1836, four years after her marriage, leaving a son two weeks old, the Crown Prince Francis Maria Leopold. Ferdinand had no intention of remaining long a widower. He first wished to marry a daughter of King Louis Philippe of France, but Austria persuaded England to join in defeating this plan, which would have resulted in too powerful a union of the reigning Bourbon families. He then applied for the hand of an Austrian princess, and in 1837 was married to Maria Theresa, daughter of the Archduke Karl, who presented him with five sons and four daughters. In spite of her proud name and lofty lineage, the new Queen was a very ordinary person, though not without some homely virtues. Her horizon was bounded by her family and her household, in the duties of which she took an active part, even mending her children’s clothes with her own hands, it is said; and she seems to have been utterly lacking in the realization that a queen should have other and wider duties than those of a housekeeper. In simplicity of tastes she much resembled her husband, who was most frugal in his mode of living; but she sometimes went so far that even he was annoyed, and one day at dinner he remonstrated with her, saying: “Come, come, Ther! [a nickname he had for her] you will soon be making us wait on ourselves at table!”