There is said to be an opinion growing up in France that Italy may be made too strong for the good of her friend and ally. A new nation of twenty-seven million souls--which would be Italy's strength, should Rome and Venetia be gained for her--might become a potent enemy even to one of its chief creators; and the taking of Savoy and Nice has caused ill-feeling between the two countries, in which Garibaldi heartily shares. Napoleon III. might be depended upon, himself, to support Italy hereafter against any foreign enemy, but it is by no means clear that France would support him in such a course; and he must defer to the opinion of his subjects to a considerable extent, despotic though his power is supposed to be. It is opinion, in the last resort, that governs every where,--under an absolute monarchy quite as determinedly as under a liberal polity like ours or England's. There is a large party in France, composed of the most incongruous materials, which has the profoundest interest in misrepresenting the policy of the Imperial government, and which is full of men of culture and intellect,--men whose labors, half-performed though they are, must have considerable effect on the French mind. The first Napoleon had the ground honeycombed under him by his enemies, who could not be suppressed, nor their labors be made to cease, even by his stern system of repression. It may be so with the present Emperor, who knows that one false step might upset his dynasty as utterly as it was twice over-thrown by the armies of combined Europe. What was then done by the lions and the eagles might now be done by the moles. The worms that gnawed through the Dutch dykes did Holland more damage than she experienced from the armies of Louis XIV. Let the French mind become possessed with the idea that the Emperor is helping Italy at the expense of France, and we may see a third Restoration in that country, or even a third Republic. The elder Bourbons were driven out because they were as a monument in Paris to Leipzig and Vittoria and Waterloo, erected by the victors on those fatal fields. The Orléans dynasty broke down because it had become an article in the belief of most Frenchmen that it was disgracing France by the corruption of its domestic policy and the subserviency of its foreign policy. Napoleon III. could no more sustain himself against the belief that he was using France for the benefit of Italy than the King of the French could sustain himself against the conviction that he was abusing the country he ruled over for the advancement of his family. He has already offended the Catholic clergy by what he has done for Italy, which they regard as having been done against their Church; and as they helped to make him, so they may be able to unmake him. To satisfy grumblers, he took Savoy and Nice. For some time past, rumor has been busy in attributing to him the design of demanding the island of Sardinia. If he should ask for