the ditch. A play, oh, how they can appreciate, and feel it, they are so sensitive; but a stern stirring fact, they can look as coldly on, as a statue!”

It is now nearly fourteen years, since I arrived in the United States of North America; and were I, here, relating the wrongs, and injustice I received from the hands of several americans—Mr. Headly, though I have not the honor of his acquaintance, as I think him a gentleman, and a man of feeling, in spite of his “Italy and the Italians,” were he using the same style in blaming his countrymen as he blames mine, Mr. Headley, I say, would execrate all the americans! But, stop, my dear sir, I would say to him; you ought not to execrate them all, because I had the misfortune of having fallen among a few american rogues. If I met individuals, whom Petrarca would call gente cui si fa notte innanzi sera, I have nevertheless a high respect still, for the whole nation: and although in this christian old, and new world it is difficult, very difficult to find a friend, not only I have a friend in America; but, I know many whom, though not my friends, I respect and esteem; and could I know the many virtuous, who generally, and unfortunately, are always the most retired, I am sure to find such a number in America—sufficient to shame those, who spoke badly of the whole nation, from which they cannot deny a Franklin received his birth. Still, Mr. Headley, who cannot ignore the many virtuous italians, who accelerated the civilization of the two hemispheres; and the last, though useless efforts made by italians for the rights of a suffering plurality; Mr. Headly, I say, proceeds his foregoing lines with the following: “How such things weaken one’s faith in man, and make him scorn his own nature, that is capable of such stone-like indifference to human suffering! These italians, as a mass, I do not like. They are exceedingly civil, but heartless—frank in manners, but capable of great duplicity in action—fiery-hearted, but not steadily brave, and selfish to any amount of meanness. In a word, you cannot trust them.” But, let us come to the point.

Genoa is a haven where the fourth of the population are strangers; and those who go to the italian opera, are strangers. Without mistake we can calculate that, in that theatre, more than the half of spectators must have been strangers. Mr. Headly says in his pamphlet, that Clara Novello was an english woman; and he does not know if the man who placed his hands on the patient, was an italian or not. But, were such a man an italian, he can no more disgrace the whole italian nation, than a Mr. Ballard can disgrace the whole Union, with his cowardly crime, against the noble minded Miss Amelia Norman. That the spectators in that italian theatre, must have thought the case of the so called dying man, not in such an urgent situation as Mr. Headley did, the very coolness with which the other man held the patient, proves it. But, if Mr. Headley did really think the man was dying; why did not his good american heart, force him to run to his succor? Or, at least, if he was morally suffering, and gazing passively at the dying man as well as the rest of those italians; why he does not suppose all those italians, though idle as he, not to have suffered his very undecided, and painful situation?

I was in Virginia; strangers were suspected as being abolitionists: some strangers had been mobbed, and hung on mere suspicion. In passing by a crowd of people assembled for an election, and seeing many persons around two men, one white and the other black, the former holding the second, bound with a rope like Jesus Christ, when he was dragged to Golgotha, and the white, thinking his old prisoner an escaped slave, with the smile of an expected gain, for which he appeared to me like another Judas, I approached the crowd; and seeing that the poor old black man was suffering, the rope being too tight, I remarked with pity to those, who were laughing at his sufferings, that the rope was torturing the poor human being! Suddenly the whole crowd felt the same charity, and pity I felt; and many went immediately to the magistrate, telling him they doubted the man being a slave, and soon they found he was a free black. I was in that place as a foreigner fallen from the clouds; no body was there to protect me, had a malicious man, for the sake of mischief, whispered, that I was an abolitionist. Mr. Headley could not have such an apprehension in Italy, had he acted with the impulse of his good heart.

Incapacity, timidity, and indecision, which cramp the finest feelings of the human heart, disappear in an instant from a crowded assembly, as soon as one, among them, springs forward the first, to do a good action. The bravest soldiers left the field of a nearly gained battle, because their general had, at that moment, the apprehension of death; and coward soldiers gained battles, because their general was brave, daring the whole time they were fighting. A motley crowd of people are less than soldiers; and an unexpected event in a place of pleasure, will paralyze their very faculties. Had I remained passive as Mr. Headley, I would not have felt the pleasure in seeing that, that crowd of americans had a heart as well as I; and that, if they did not feel sooner the pity which I felt, it was because they were habituated to see slaves in like situation, and not by want of a good heart. Were it necessary, I would bring many like instances which happened to me in America. But, my object, here, is neither a wish to write of my good actions, nor that of judging the whole mass of americans by such little things, or little casualties.

However, as the english Clara Novello went on with her sweet strain, the man near, held the patient down, and the people seemed to overlook the painful sight, I am rather inclined to think, that the patient must have been an epileptic, perhaps known as such by every one in that italian theatre, or, at least, believed by them an epileptic, a malady for which no remedy has yet been found, and the best thing is, to leave him alone, until the spasm will pass over.

Were I controverting all the little incidents upon which, as it seems, Mr. Headley places too much consideration; this work, which I intend to have printed in the form of a small pamphlet, would grow to a big volume. I will only say here, that a writer who intends to give an idea of Italy, and of the Italians, should have taken a quite different ground, though he says: “I have gone over these little things, because they are the best illustration of italian character.” So, a people who has its enemies in the house, a people from whom to expect freedom is to expect the impossible, impossible, I say, because France with her pretended freedom, England with her selfishness, Russia with her despotism, and all the european despotical alliance, diabolically blessed, and sanctioned by what they call christian religion, did, and always would unite with Austria, to crush Italy—her people is judged by little things, which travelers, meet on their way. Every time the italians attempted to shake off the yoke of foreign tyrants, the tyrants oppressing the very italian princes, who rule italian blood, the pope, and his accomplices rendered grace to God, when they heard that their jealous enemies, I mean the protesants, gave to italian princes, ropes to hang the italian Catos, who attempted to place on the italian soil, italian princes, free of foreign servitude. But, this yet uncivilized world, in which the friends of humanity are misrepresented, is still doomed to look without feeling at victims, who honor our degraded race!—May the true God, who is in heaven, listen to my prayer! A short prayer, but a true one!—Foreigners who call us effeminate, must be effeminate themselves, unless they are so