with very different matters, and as to the Italian clergy in London, their bigoted opposition to the Italian Gratuitous School, and the calumnies they disseminated against its founders, suffice to show how little they understand their mission, and how destitute they are of faith and charity.

I sought another method of alleviating the sufferings of those poor boys, and founded an association for their protection, and a gratuitous school, wherein they might learn somewhat of their duties and their rights; and be able to give good counsel to their fellow-countrymen on their return. On several occasions I brought those of the masters who had been guilty of violence to justice in the English courts, and when they found they were watched, they gradually became less cruel and arbitrary in their conduct. But the school had to struggle against the most determined opposition from them, from the priests of the Sardinian chapel, and from the agents of the various Italian governments.

The Italian Gratuitous School was founded on the 10th November, 1841, and was kept open until 1848, when my long absence from England, and the idea that the Italian movement, if successful, would open up new means of popular education in Italy, determined those who aided me in its management and direction to close it. During those seven years we gave both moral and intellectual instruction to several hundred youths and children who were in a state of semi-barbarism, and who, half afraid at first, and urged only by curiosity, came to our humble rooms at 5 Hatton Garden, to be gradually tamed and civilized by the gentleness and kindness of the masters, until at length they learned to rejoice with a certain

conscious pride in the idea of returning to their country possessed of education. They used to come between nine and ten o'clock at night, bringing their organs with them. We taught them reading, writing, arithmetic, simple geography, and the elements of drawing. On the Sunday evenings we gathered all our scholars together to listen to an hour's lecture upon Italian history, the lives of our great men, the outlines of natural philosophy; any subject, in short, that appeared to us calculated to elevate those unformed minds, darkened by poverty and their state of abject subjection to the will of others. Nearly every Sunday evening for two years, I lectured to them upon Italian history or elementary astronomy; a subject eminently religious, and calculated to purify the mind, which, reduced to popular phraseology and form, should be among the first subjects chosen for the education of the young. And upwards of a hundred discourses upon the duties of man, and various moral subjects, were declaimed by Filippo Pistrucci, once well known in Italy as an improvisatore, whom I had made director of the school, and who identified himself with his mission with unexampled zeal.

It was a second period of fraternal labor and love, refreshing to my own soul and to the souls of other weary exiles, fortifying them in serious thought and earnest purpose. It was indeed a holy work, holily fulfilled. Every assistance given was gratuitous. The director, the vice-director (Luigi Bucalossi, a Tuscan, who was most untiring and devoted), the masters, all who in any way aided in the education of our scholars, were unpaid. Yet they were all of them men who had families to support by their own

exertions. The drawing-masters were Scipione Pistrucci, the son of the director, and Celestino Vai (at present employed in the office of the "Unità Italiana," at Milan), than whom I have never known a man more gentle and kindly to his scholars, or more deeply convinced of the duty that binds us to the poor and uneducated.

The reading and writing masters were workingmen, who not only subscribed to our school, but sacrificed the little time left to them after their hard day's work, in order to consecrate the evening to their self-imposed duty. On the 10th of November, every year (the anniversary of the opening of our school), we invited all our pupils, about two hundred, to a distribution of small prizes, which was followed by a modest supper, carved and served by ourselves, and enlivened by patriotic songs and the improvisations of the director. One of those evenings was equal in moral influence and effect to a whole year of mere instruction. Those unfortunate lads whom their masters treated like slaves, learned to feel that they were men, our equals, living souls. Many English friends, both men and women, came to our workmen's supper, and went away touched and improved themselves. I remember poor Margaret Fuller coming there when recently arrived from the United States, where for some reason she had learned to regard us with a certain distrust. But she had not been with us one hour, on the occasion of one of those suppers, before she was like a sister amongst us. Her pure and noble nature, responsive to every generous impulse, understood and felt the treasure of affection which had been disclosed amongst us by a religious sense of the holiness of our aim.

Our example, bore fruit: first in London, where the priests of the Sardinian chapel, finding all their efforts to put down our school unavailing, were reduced to opening one themselves in the same street ; then in America, where I, in the mean time, had formed some friendships. Schools like ours were established, in 1842, in New York by Felice Foresti and Giuseppe Avezzana; in Boston by Professor Bachi; and in Monte Video by G. B. Cuneo. The school, as I have said, afforded me a means of contact with the Italian workmen in London. I selected the best among these to help me in a work more directly national in its purpose. We formed an association of working men, and published a journal called the "Apostolato Popolare," bearing as a motto the words: "Work, and its proportionate recompense." During these years also the bonds of friendship formed in Switzerland, between ourselves and the Poles were strengthened; but it is unnecessary to record here the details of the international labors we undertook together.

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CHAPTER VI.

RECORDS OF THE BROTHERS BANDIERA.

1842-1844.

"But should I succumb beneath the tempest in the midst of which I am now struggling, let not my dear ones blush for the love they bore me, but plant one flower in remembrance of me, to purify my name from the infamy which our tyrants are certain to cast upon it." — Letter of Attilio Bandiera, November 14, 1843.

Adieu, adieu! Poor in all things, we elect you our executor, so that we may not perish in the memory of our fellow-citizens."- Letter of Emilio Bandiera, March 10, 1844.

I WRITE these pages in obedience to the last wishes of the brothers Bandiera, and in order that the Italians may learn what manner of men they were who died for the liberty of their country at Cosenza. And I write them now, although for many reasons I should have preferred to fulfill my task a few years later, because the Austrian journals and the Italian police are diffusing a series of calumnies with regard to the Bandiera; calumnies which are echoed and repeated by numerous cowards, and numberless fools, in order to defame-I do not speak of the living, for what are such attacks to us? - the character and reputation of martyrs whose name every Italian should utter with head bowed down in

veneration.

It is commonly said, in speaking of the Bandiera, that the liberty of Italy is ill attempted by twenty