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of high physical and mathematical distinction; and Berti Pichat in the Home Department, who, when he had been to Rome and seen how matters stood, went off at once, and then resigned his office. Calandrelli, an honourable man, who had endeavoured, with faithfulness and above board, to promote method and discipline both in the Assembly and in the country, by exposing the grossest of the abuses and disorders, resigned because the Triumvirs put slights upon his authority to gratify the disorderly. The War and Naval Departments were left in the charge of the Commission appointed by the Assembly, and the Interior remained in the hands of the busy-body Accursi. Proclamations, announcements, laws, edicts, regulations, circulars, swarmed. It was thus that Assembly, Triumvirs, and Ministers diffused their wisdom. It is a common art, or vice rather; men think the multiplication of laws is science, authority, renovation; whereas it is mere falsehood, childishness, and chaos. Laws, however, edicts, and proclamations, they made, and of all sorts. The Assembly fixed pensions for persons wounded in war and for the families of persons slain; it devolved temporarily on the Executive Power the exercise of the prerogative of mercy; it recalled all leaves of absence granted to its members; it took into consideration "the foundation of establishments both in Rome and the Provinces for the reception of indigent families," and in the meantime, it appropriated at Rome the Office of the Inquisition for the purpose. "Faith in God, in right, and in ourselves," was one day the cry of the Triumvirs; and the

next, “Tell the world by your deeds, that every gun not now employed in our defence, not in the hands of a soldier ready for the fight, is a mortal sin against the Republic." They made a requisition for all muskets; they put the National Guard of Rome under the War Department, and placed Sturbinetti at its head, who was universally beloved and esteemed for his fine talents and distinguished rectitude. They created 251,595 crowns of new Treasury bonds, and declared that those issued by the Pope's Government should bear no interest. So, by this paper, they ruined the security which payment of interest affords; at once a mockery, and a foul breach of plighted faith. A rumour had gone abroad, that they thought of an accommodation; so they announced, " that the Triumvirate would view any concession, any deviation from its principle, whatever its degree, origin, or shape, as treason; that for the Triumvirate, just as for the Assembly, Rome and Republic were identical; that at the moment of transition from the King's war to the People's, in the face of the energy of Genoa, of the cry for country and independence which all the good in Piedmont, in Tuscany, and elsewhere indignantly were sounding, and of Austrian intimidation, the very thought of compromise would be crime, and dastard crime." They decreed a surcharge of 25 per cent. on all who should not within seven days pay the first instalment of the forced loan. I omit votes of minor moment, and the copious phrases about love, and justice, and brotherhood, to which facts but ill corresponded, for with the calamities of the country in

solence increased. The news that Genoa was reduced to obedience under the Constitutional monarchy, neither chastened nor unsettled those who had hailed that Italian calamity with plaudits, as though it had been a glorious Italian victory, but augmented the fury and desperation, which they styled enthusiasm ; and the names of the young King Victor Emmanuel, and of the brave La Marmora were branded with disgrace. For this also is a canon in the code of the evangelical school of democratic liberty, to pretend allegiance while contriving plots; to denounce the charge of plotting as calumnious; to brag afterwards of this hypocrisy, when by fraud and force they are uppermost; to honour those who break oaths, defame those who keep them, curse such as put down force by force. Then, when beaten, they whine over the victims; then they invoke pity, pardon, humanity, nay, the religion they constantly blaspheme: they count up gashes and deaths, and multiply them, but confine their laments to the gashes, the deaths, the sufferings, on their own side; as if the defenders on the other, their wounded, their tortured, were neither Christians nor men, and pity and charity themselves were but the camp-followers of a party.

Nor do they profane Christianity less than charity. They treat Christ as a myth; and the Gospel as the book of the Sibyls of Democracy; twist the sacred text beyond belief, impersonate the people in God on the one hand, in their own party on the other, and find the priesthood of God and of the people in drunken and sanguinary factions. Aware, however,

that the masses worship God and are devout in the religion of their fathers, they affect religious zeal, and traffic with the innate sentiment of religion, as they do with that of liberty, to gain ascendancy; imitating herein the emperors and tyrants who, when ruffians cannot do all they want, turn themselves into Holy Inquisitors, Prophets, Pontiffs, and under pretext of protecting Religion, crush and debase it. Nor is this declamation; it is the record of actual hypocrisy and profanation. I resume the narrative.

It had long been customary in Rome, on the evening of Good Friday, to illuminate a huge Cross in the Church of St. Peter, which, hanging from the dome, threw flickering rays along the lurid vaults. In the year 1824, under Leo XII., that custom was abolished on account of certain scandals; but the Triumvirate made a point of restoring its observance. It is said to have been the notion of Armellini, who was well acquainted with the instincts and cravings of the Roman populace; as a former Saints' advocate, half lawyer and half cleric, he knew they liked a show, and the seasoning of pleasure with their religion. So the illumination took place; and the light which irradiated the tombs of the Apostles, on the day which for the faithful commemorates the passion of Christ, attracted the inquisitive to the spectacle, the licentious to their orgies. To mingle, as certain ecclesiastics are too apt, political with religious symbols, tricolor fireworks were let off; a fresh profanation, and a fresh hypocrisy. Nay they boasted of it; for the Monitore Romano (this Frenchified ap

pellation they had given to their Government Gazette) announced that "they had breathed a moral and patriotic harmony into an exhibition, which in past times had been an idle dissipation, to dazzle the eyes without leaving traces on the soul." Easter Day arrived; and the Triumvirs commanded the Canons of St. Peter's to make ready the same magnificent function that it is usual for the Vicar of Christ to celebrate; and when these ministers of God refused, as they were bound, to act the part of political showmasters, they found a priest, who was an army-chaplain, under interdict as some believed, and him they caused to celebrate episcopally (as it is called) at one of the four altars of St. Peter's, at which only the Pontiff, and the Dean of the Sacred College appointed by Papal bull, are authorised to perform Mass. The Church was in all its festal array; the Triumvirs were present, with a number of Deputies and public officers, the Clubs, the Tuscan, Swiss, American, and English Consuls; military music played. When Mass was over, the Priest went in procession to the great balcony of the Basilica, from which the Pope ordinarily gives his blessing to his Catholic people. Amidst the flags of the Republic, he bore the Holy Sacrament; and he blessed the kneeling multitude in the wide Piazza amidst the pealing of cannon and of bells; Mazzini then appeared in the balcony, and plaudits were given for the Republic. Those who saw the spectacle (and I was one), reflected sorrowfully on this cursed hypocrisy, and how a people not dieted with solid and masculine religion becomes the prey of

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