Sketches ON ITALY: ITS LAST REVOLUTION, ITS ACTUAL CONDITION, ITS TENDENCIES AND HOPES. LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, & Co., PATERNOSTER ROW. 246.4.13. INTRODUCTION. THE renewed and increasing interest felt by our countrymen in Italian affairs seems to call for a popular view of what may be termed "the case of Italy against her oppressors," and such this little work will be found to afford. It is from the pen of one whose name unhappily cannot be divulged without injury to himself, but who is known by all his friends to be intimately acquainted with the history, politics, and social condition of Italy, and as a man of high honour and true Christian principle. A Roman Catholic by birth, he has the conviction, shared by many, that the political element in that system would be annihilated by the overthrow of its political centre at Rome, and that whatever is really Christian in it would readily amalgamate with the universal Church of Christ, were it once set free from the despotism of the Vatican. His patriotism is attested by cruel wrongs inflicted on him by the enemies of freedom, and endured with heroic resignation. His sources of information are unexceptionable, and his |