"The irregulars are decidedly improving. They are getting a taste for barricade and street fighting; they still blaze away their ammunition in a frantic manner, but they are beginning to keep to their posts and even to advance, if not too much exposed. This is our advantage in these street fights; the longer they last, the more they increase the confidence of the irregulars, and destroy the discipline of the regular troops. "Every hour brings new proofs of this in the shape of prisoners and deserters from the Neapolitan forces. With those taken in the hospitals, there must be above 1,000. There is an order from the general to treat them well, and there is no animosity prevailing against them, but so much the greater is that against the _sbirri_ and '_compagni d'armi_,' a kind of local police, who have committed great horrors. They are picked out everywhere, and brought up in gangs of five and six to the committee, trembling for their lives; but only one of them has been killed hitherto, having been taken in the act of firing at those who wanted to arrest him. "The ceasing of the bombardment, or rather the diminishing of it, has brought people out into the streets again." GARIBALDI IN A DANGEROUS CRISIS. "_May 29_—6 P.M. "About 3 P.M. one of those panics suddenly broke out again which occur every moment, and serve more than anything else to demoralize the town and the _squadre_. The steamers which had gone off yesterday came back, and the rumor was that they were disembarking their troops before the Porta dei Greci;—great running and movement, great confusion, all caused by a column of dust on the road running along the sea-shore. In the afternoon there was some heavy firing, both toward the Piazza Reale and on the left of it, where the Neapolitans have a bastion which flanks the palace and is itself defended from the Castello. All yesterday and to-day the object on that side was to get possession of a cluster of houses, so as to isolate that bastion, and force them out of this, as from that of Sant' Agata. The town is too large, and Garibaldi's immediate followers are too few to be sent everywhere, and too precious to be exposed, except in the greatest necessity. Thus it is the _squadre_ who form the mass in most places.