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182 gratified. "It is a matter of great thankfulness," says Mr. Story, "that God permitted Mrs. Browning to witness the second Italian revolution. No patriot Italian gave greater sympathy to the aspirations of 1859 than Mrs. Browning. . . . Great was the moral courage of this frail woman, to publish the Poems Before Congress at a time when England was most suspicious of Napoleon. Greater was her conviction, when she abased England and exalted France for the cold neutrality of the one and the generous aid of the other in this War of Italian Independence. Bravely did she bear up against the angry criticisms excited by such anti-English sentiment."

During the uprising of the Italians in 1859, when, aided by the French, they were successful in driving their oppressors back from so large a portion of Italian soil, Mrs. Browning's pen and brain both worked hard for the cause she had so strong at heart. Her poems and her life at this period are part of Italian history. Above all did she exalt and glory in the ideal Emperor her imagination had portrayed. The hero she had already believed the Third Napoleon to be was now fully confirmed. Had he not sworn to free Italy from sea to sea, and was he not aiding her people to accomplish this great object by defeating and driving out the hated Tedeschi? With full faith in her Emperor she wrote her passionate lines on "Napoleon the Third in Italy."

July came, and with it the sudden and maddening Treaty of Peace. Mrs. Browning could not but mourn with Italy at the overthrow of hopes which had appeared so close on their realisation yet were so rudely crashed. In the first pangs of her grief, when stunned, if not crushed by the course of events, she addressed