The last intelligence from Italy, if it be only true,
is the most dis- heartening received this year. It is positively asserted by no less an authority than the regular correspondent of the Times, that General Cialdini has let loose his troops on a town of 1500 inhabitants, bombarded it, and burned it to the ground, no small section of its inhabitants perishing with their houses. The provocation was great, the inhabitants having treacherously murdered thirty of the National Guard; but nothing can palliate, much less justify, such an outrage on civilization. It was not to destroy towns wholesale that the Bourbons were dismissed, nor was it to slaughter Italians en mass. that Cialdini was appointed the King's lieutenant. We hear much of brigand atrocities, but they have done nothing yet which sur- passes in horror this specimen of an Italian's notion of just retribu- tion. There is hope still that the inhabitants were permitted to escape, and that what seems an atrocity may be explained into a blunder.
