Pitti with banners and _vivas_ for the space of three hours and a half It was the time when the Grand Duke was a patriot and Pio Nono was a liberal.

The new helmets and epaulettes of the civic guard proclaimed the glories of genuine freedom.

The pleasure of the populace was like that of children, and perhaps it had some serious feeling behind it.

The incomparable Grand Duke had granted a liberal constitution, and was led back from the opera to the Pitti by the torchlights of a cheering crowd--"through the dark night a flock of stars seemed sweeping up the piazza." A few months later, and the word of Mrs Browning is "Ah, poor Italy"; the people are attractive, delightful, but they want conscience and self reverence.[42] Browning and she painfully felt that they grew cooler and cooler on the subject of Italian patriotism.

A revolution had been promised, but a shower of rain fell and the revolution was postponed.