The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-17 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.--Surr OFFICE, MAY 17, MO.

THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
61—highest since noon yesterday.
62—lowest this morning and during the night.
62—this day at noon.

BARO3IETER-29.68.
WlND—South-Westerly; fresh, with dull weather; rain
in the night, and all this morning.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DiY.—Morning, llh. 44m.—Afternoon, 1. Oh. Om.
To-Moßlww.-Morning, 12h. 6m.—Afternoon,; 12h. 25m.

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THE SUN.

LONDON, THURSDAY, MAY 17, 1860.

It is like a seething cauldron that poor Italy—
and where we can little better get than—
" Bubble, bubble,
Toil and trouble.
Fighting in Sicily. Fighting or an imminent
certainty of fighting in the Abruzzi and Calabria.
Preparations for attack and defence in the Eternal
City and the Romagna. An abortive counter-
revolutionary movement once more in Tuscany—
bard upon the completion of the late successful re-
volution. Sullen anguish for the time being in
Venice herself and throughout the Venetian terri-
tories. Anguish, too, of another kind along the
frontiers at the heart of the ancient kingdom of
Savoy. Even King VICTOR EMMANUEL himself
cannot in his heart be satisfied. Italy is still, at
the best, but in a transition state. Her ambition
has been baulked. The vision held out to her was
one of absolute emancipation. The goal towards
which the race was to be run was that, in one word,
of Unity. Italy was to be for the Italians, and for
none but Italians. No German Viceroy was
thenceforth to rule south of the range of the Car-
pathians. The Roman peninsula was to be free
from the base of that great range southwards to the
ex tremest point of Cape Spartivento. Italy—to
echo the famous pledge put forward in the EMPE-
ROR'S Milan proclamation—was to be free "from the
Alps to the Adriatic." The world now knows how
the promise was broken—how the halcyon vision
proved illasory—how the dream was dissipated. It
is long since—as the phrase runs—matter of his-
tory. The annalist who has to recount the progress
of the war of Italian emancipation in 1859, after
describing Montebello, and Magenta, and Solferino,
will have to finish off with the anticlimax ot
Villafranca. Therb were the fair and beautiful
plains of Lombardy, it is true, emancipated then
from Austrian rule; handed over by FRANCIS
JOSEPH to NAPOiEON fr., and by NAPOLEON 111.
handed again, with an air of Imperial magnani-
mity and magnificence, to VICTOR EMMANUEL.
The consolatory cup was then put to the lips of
the Soldier-King of PIEDMONT, and he quaffed from
it with a sense at first of the delightful intoxica-
tion of victory, even though the victory was only-
partial. But he came at last to the dregs There
was that lamentable quid pro quo of Savoy and its
Secession! If Sardinia gained to the right she lost
to the left ; and with that loss (in the face of
Europe) suffered degradation, Since then, of
course, there have come to King VICTOR EMMANUEL
the graflual absorption southwards of province upon
province, of principality upon principality. The
boundaries of the new kingdom of Northern Italy
have been expanding and expanding like circles in
water into which a pebble has been cast.

The

pebble that has done this was that worthless pro-
mise in the Milan proclamation—since the throw-
ing forth of which the frontiers of the dominions
ruled by VICTOR EMMAN UEL have Widened gradually
until they combine within them now Lombardy,