familiar with it, and very probably some such errors may have escaped
my notice in the revision, especially as many emendations must be
conjectural, the original manuscript not now existing.

There is one fact, however, which gives this part of the volume a high
value. Madame Ossoli was in Rome during the most eventful period of
its modern history. She was almost the only American who remained
there during the Italian Revolution, and the siege of the city. Her
marriage with the Marquis Ossoli, who was Captain of the Civic Guard
and active in the republican councils and army, and her own ardent
love of freedom, and sacrifices for it, brought her into immediate
acquaintance with the leaders in the revolutionary army, and made
her cognizant of their plans, their motives, and their characters.
Unsuccessful for a time as has been that struggle for freedom, it was
yet a noble one, and its true history should be known in this country
and in all lands, that justice may be done to those who sacrificed
much, some even life, in behalf of liberty. Her peculiar fitness to
write the history of this struggle is well expressed by Mr. Greeley,
in his Introduction to one of her volumes recently published.[A] "Of
Italy's last struggle for liberty and light," he says, "she might
not merely say, with the Grattan of Ireland's kindred effort, half a
century earlier, 'I stood by its cradle; I followed its hearse.'
She might fairly claim to have been a portion of its incitement, its
animation, its informing soul. She bore more than a woman's part in
its conflicts and its perils; and the bombs of that ruthless army
which a false and traitorous government impelled against the ramparts
of Republican Rome, could have stilled no voice more eloquent in its
exposures, no heart more lofty in its defiance, of the villany which
so wantonly drowned in blood the hopes, while crushing the dearest
rights, of a people, than those of Margaret Fuller."