shooting at a police-officer; but the edict which awarded the punishment said that "the crime had not been proved on account of the spirit of party prevalent in that province!" It was but the other day that a man who had been imprisoned seven years at Ancona, without either trial or interrogation, was abruptly told that his cell-door was open and he might quit the gaol. The captive thought that some trap was laid for him, and refused to quit the prison until the keeper showed him the order of liberation, and prevailed on him, with great difficulty, to depart. Such is the treatment of those suspected of political offences; but let a man commit a real crime, he is sure to find some prelate or other intercessor to plead away his punishment; and all, as the Romans say, "per bontà di cuore."

In no country in the world-England perhaps and Naples excepted-are laws, lawyers, and lawsuits so numerous as at Rome. Whole fortunes have often been exhausted, as in the cause between the Barberini and Colonna families, by an interminable attempt to decide on some private right. An Englishman has little right to be angry with those who still profess a sacred horror at usury; but it must be confessed that the Romans are in this respect more zealously attached to ancient prejudices than ourselves. In 1828 an 66 assunto was placarded in Rome, announcing that the Senator and his tribunal, under the power of a decree of Falconieri,

*Written in 1828.

governor of Rome in 1720, had condemned to certain penalties three usurers, found guilty of trading at two per cent. per month. One of them, seventy years old, was condemned to a year's imprisonment and a fine of 1000 crowns; but the punishment of one of them was remitted because, as the record averred, he had been eleven months in prison previously to his trial.* However, the heaviest punishment-three years' imprisonment and the galleys-was threatened against both him and the other culprits if they should ever again "fall into suspicion" of the like offence. Against one of the condemned no proofs had been adduced; but he was ordered to present himself if proofs were ever found. How long ago is it that Beccaria wrote his book and Bentham his essay?

The Papalty, like the Ottoman Empire in Europe, subsists by sufferance, and on account of the difficulty of disposing of so much territory and so many subjects to any new master. The great Powers having determined that this strange dominion shall not be put an end to, the Romans themselves have not the means, if they had the inclination, to effect a change. Some of the provinces are more suspected of revolutionary wishes; but in the capital a government even much more oppressive than any now existing would probably be submitted to

* In 1854 I saw the guillotine still standing on the eminence above the Cloaca Maxima, where, the same morning, had been executed three men who had been in prison since 1849 !!!

without resistance, and almost without a murmur.

The

head of the state is an Italian, he is chosen by Italians, and the humblest subject of a pope may succeed to his sceptre. These reflections may console a Roman for his submission to a spiritual prince, not only insignificant but ridiculous in the eyes of all Europe.*

Rome derives much less of her importance from the power of the living than from the remains of the dead: she is rather one great academy for the artists of the universe than the capital of an independent state. She is the metropolis of the painter, the sculptor, the architect, the antiquarian; add also, of the idle and restless of all nations. To them she belongs much more than to the Romans themselves. Even her sovereign and his court make but a part of the show for the curious of the earth, and, equally with the Column of Trajan and the Porch of Agrippa, seem to belong to another age. Neither the one nor the other interests the native. He is a stranger in his own city, whose very decorations and aggrandizement are contrived for the attraction, and, in many cases, are due to the enterprise, of foreigners.

I asked a resident for many years at Rome for a character of the nobles. This was his answer: "Their palaces are either sold to Torlonia, the Bonaparte family, or others; or falling down, like the great Chigi

*The above was written in 1828. I see very little to alter now (1854), except that there is more general discontent apparent than formerly.

square; or let as apartments, like the Rospigliosi and Barberini-their fortunes are exhausted by improvidence or dispersed amongst many branches - their young men associate with the lowest of the artisans, are equally ignorant and prejudiced, and more debauched—their amusements are without vivacity-their vices without vigour their pursuits, if such a word can be applied to him who does nothing, ignoble and effeminate. (It is true that the young gentlemen who fill the promenades of London and Paris have very little more to recommend them than the patricians of modern Rome; and it must be also confessed that the higher orders in their country have an excuse which cannot be given for the follies of any other aristocracy. There is no career open to them, and, in fact, they are not the aristocracy— at least, they are not a privileged order. The real nobility of Rome must be looked for amongst the members of the hierarchy, who, from the very reverend and most eminent Lord High Chamberlain and the legates of provinces, down to the purple-stockinged mylords of the metropolis, enjoy all the dignities and emoluments, and perform all the functions, attached to the privileged classes of other states. Of these grandees the importance is so strictly preserved that a Cardinal must not appear without three servants behind his carriage, and a Monsignore is not allowed even to walk without one liveried attendant at his heels. The attire of these lacqueys is, however, quite a matter of indifference, and would in England denote extreme indigence. A layman, either

high or low, finds the utmost difficulty in obtaining redress from one of the sovereign order, whereas a simple 'parocho,' if he would punish an enemy, has but to apply to the Presidenza, which gives him a file of soldiers, and the offender is carried away in the night. The natural consequence of this inferiority of condition is, that, with one or two exceptions, the great nobility, or, as they are called, the princes of Rome, neither form a distinct class nor obtain consideration in mixed society. Those that are distinguished are known only by their eccentricities. The great B can scarcely read or write. Pius VII. would not receive him at court; but Leo XII. offered him the command of his army. One is a money-lender at eight per cent.; another is a notorious miser, not only of his money, but his marbles. This prince, wishing the other day to be very courteous, displayed some of his rare medals at his dinner-table, but only one by one, and never producing the second till he had carefully pocketed the first. The Marquess

the most ingenious of these gentlemen, said on one occasion, 'We go for nothing at Rome; we are ignorant and we are happy; but our Milanese friends, who know something and wanted to know more, they got themselves into prison.' Their happiness, however, may be doubted: their manner and expression denote anything but content. A party of them jaunting (on an allegria) into the country is the most melancholy of all human objects, even in the eyes of those who have assisted at some of our own summer excursions to the