wife, you are yourself just now absent from home.... Do you not with me
see that the Italians already are showing how vast a benefit L. N. has
brought them? It is only the beginning of a vast revolution.

"I am, ever your true friend,

"F. W. Newman."




CHAPTER IX

LETTERS TO DR. NICHOLSON


In 1860 Sardinia, because it happened to possess the clever, far-seeing
Count Cavour, had "dreamed against a distant goal"--the goal when his king
should be made King of Italy, instead of only Sardinia. He only had to
wait one year before his wish was attained. Victor Emmanuel, son of
Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, was in 1861 proclaimed King of Italy,
and nine years later he was head of the whole united nation. This is
briefly touched on in Newman's first letter to Dr. Nicholson in January,
1860. He also spoke in strong praise of a book of Mrs. Beecher Stowe which
he and his wife (then staying at Hastings to see the new year in, as they
did the year before as well) were reading together. Mrs. Beecher Stowe
was, of course, best known by her _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, perhaps the most
popular American novel ever written. _The Minister's Wooing_ was published
in 1859.