Baron Riccasoli, who succeeded Count Cavour, did not hold office long. The object of his policy was to win Rome for Italy, which rendered him obnoxious to Napoleon III. Moreover, he was too stiff and formal in his manners for the loose-living King of Italy, and so his fall was inevitable. To him succeeded Ratazzi--a Minister who was acceptable to Napoleon because he thought more of winning back Venice, than of expelling the French from the Holy City. How far Victor Emmanuel and Ratazzi participated in an intrigue, the result of which was that General Garibaldi began to raise the “Party of Action,” is not clear. At any rate, Garibaldi, at a meeting of a rifle club in Palermo, at which the Heir Apparent to the Crown was present, announced his intention of opening a new campaign of liberation. From Sicily he led a band of “Red Shirts” to the mainland, evidently under the impression that he was to repeat his former exploits with the secret connivance of the Italian Government. Before he advanced into the heart of Calabria, he found he had been deceived. Victor Emmanuel’s troops attacked and dispersed his irregular forces at Aspromonte, before they came into collision with the French. Garibaldi himself was wounded, and though at first sent as a prisoner to Spezia, he was soon afterwards set free, and his “rebellion” forgiven. Napoleon III. then induced Russia and Prussia to recognise the Kingdom of Italy. But in November Ratazzi resigned rather than face a vote of censure, and Farini succeeded him. Italian intriguers had been busy at Athens fomenting rebellion against King Otho. Their object was to depose him, and seat Prince Thomas, the Duke of Genoa, on the throne. Russian and French intrigues seem also to have been going on. But every conspiracy, whether of native or foreign origin, had for its object the expulsion of King Otho, whose authority had been undermined by Palmerston’s treatment in 1850, and whose reign had done nothing to gratify Greek aspirations for an extension of territory. Otho’s opposition to progressive reform rendered him an obstacle to those who thought that Greece in the Ottoman Empire, might play the part of Piedmont in Italy. He was therefore driven from his throne, and the Crown of Greece offered to Prince Alfred of England, on whose behalf it was declined. England, however, showed her goodwill to Greece by declaring herself ready to surrender the Ionian Islands, an offer which gave Lord Palmerston an opportunity of emphasising his belief in “the doctrine of nationalities,” which he had so strenuously insisted on applying in Italy. In 1863, when the Greeks chose a Danish Prince for their King, these islands were transferred to Greece. In Germany the cause of Reform slept. Austria apparently had increased her influence, because the King of Prussia was in conflict with the representatives of the Prussian people as to the reorganisation and strengthening of