from the weakness info which she had fallen or had been precipitated. He dared not offend the Catholics, who saw then, as they see now, a champion in Austria. He was the victim of circumstances, and he had to bow before them, in order that he might finally become their master. Then he had no occasion for a quarrel with Austria. She was at the lowest ebb her fortunes had known since the day that the Turks appeared for the second time before Vienna. She could not have maintained herself in Italy, even after the successes of Radetzky, had not Nicholas sent one hundred and fifty thousand men to her assistance in Hungary. What had France to fear from her? No more than she had to fear from her on the day after Austerlitz. Years rolled on, and brought with them great changes; and the greatest of those changes was to be seen in Italy, in reference to the position of Austria there, and its effect upon France. Austria rapidly reëstablished her power in Italy, not only over Lombardy and Venice, but over every part of the Peninsula, excepting Sardinia. Tuscany was connected with her by various ties, and was ruled as she wished it to be ruled. Parma and Modena were hers in every sense. She was the patron and protector of the abominable Bomba, and her support alone enabled him to defy the sentiment of the civilized world, and to indulge in cruelties such as would have added new infamy to the name of Ezzelino. She upheld the misgovernment of the Papal States, which has made Rome the scandal of Europe. All the nominal rulers of the Italian States, with the honorable exception of the King of Sardinia, were her vassal princes, and were no more free to act without her consent than were the kings the Roman Republic and Empire allowed to exist within their dominions free to act without the consent of the proconsuls. What the proconsul of Syria was to the little potentates mentioned in the New Testament, the Austrian viceroy in the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom was to the nominal rulers of the various Italian States. It only remained to bring Sardinia within this ring-fence of sea and mountains to convert all Italy into an Austrian dependency. There is nothing like this in history, we verily believe. In the short period of ten years after the capture of Milan by Radetzky, (August 4, 1848,) the Austrians had established themselves completely in nearly every part of Italy. Of the twenty-seven millions of people that compose her population, twenty-two millions were as much at the command of Austria as were the Hungarians and Bohemians. Had she had the sense to use her power, not with mildness only, but beneficially to this great mass of men, and had nothing occurred to disturb her plans, she would have nearly doubled the number of her subjects, and have more than doubled her resources. She would have become a great maritime state, and have converted the Mediterranean into an Austrian lake. Had they been well governed, the Italians might, and most probably