They were the last of the heroes.
When Browning was first living in Italy, a telegram which had been sent to him was stopped on the frontier and suppressed on account of his known sympathy with the Italian Liberals.

It is almost impossible for people living in a commonwealth like ours to understand how a small thing like that will affect a man.

It was not so much the obvious fact that a great practical injury was really done to him; that the telegram might have altered all his plans in matters of vital moment.

It was, over and above that, the sense of a hand laid on something personal and essentially free.

Tyranny like this is not the worst tyranny, but it is the most intolerable.