As to the native Roman troops, they are badly officered, and without instruction, discipline, or courage, and never make war but on their fellow-citizens. All that is good and great in Rome 'is, as M. About with most other authors say, the production, not of the Popes or their governments. The gigantic aqueducts, the stupendous sewers, the magnificent roads which number twenty centuries, attest the industry and civilization of long buried nations and of an extinct civilization. Yet the Roman people are brave, most intelligent, muscular, and well grown, and would be industrious under a civilizing and progressive lay government. It was the general belief in this country and in France a few years ago, that the Romans were a debased and whitelivered populace, without any of the masculine virtues. Yet when emancipated in 1849 from the guidance and control of about 38,000 priests and 21,000 monks, aided by a few bold and courageous adventurers from all quarters of Europe, the Romans kept the French army at bay for months, and performed signal acts of valour. If these men were under a good secular government, there is in them the material to make ingenious artists, mechanicians, watchmakers, jewellers, sculptors, engravers, civil engineers; to make thoroughly practical farmers, and even excellent soldiers and sailors. The descendants of Romans, and Romans themselves, in every country in Europe and out of it, excepting Rome their native city, form able men of science, excellent merchants and commercial men. Witness the Mammianis, the Armellinis, the Pepolis, the Farinis, the Saffis, and the Mecchis, who in England, France, Sardinia, and America have obtained renown. Yet had these men remained at home a prison or a dungeon would be their reward from a theocratic government. The remedy M. About suggests for this misgovernment and malversation is the separation of the temporal from the spiritual power. Make the Pope, he says, Bishop of Rome, and give him as large a salary as you will, drawn from all the Roman Catholics in Christendom, but deprive him of

all temporal power, which he misuses and abuses horribly.

I have often (says M. About) spoken with honest, honourable, and enlightened men in the States of the Churchthe leaders of the middle class-who have talked to me as follows: If, said they, there came down from heaven a man strong enough to cut into the core of abuses, to reform the administration, to send the priests and monks to their churches and the Austrians to Vienna; if there was a man strong enough and honest enough to promulgate a civil code, to render the country healthful by drainage, to introduce good husbandry, to promote industry and manufactures, to facilitate commerce, to finish the lines of rail, to secularize education, to propagate modern ideas, and to place the Romans on a level with the Western

nations-we should fall down and absolutely worship him. It is said by people that know us not, that we cannot be governed; but give us a prince capable of governing, and you shall soon see if we are niggard in conceding to him the fullest powers. Whoever he may befrom wheresoever he may come—we will give him carte blanche to be absolute master, to do everything he likes so long as anything shall remain to be done. All that we ask in return is, that his task once finished, he will permit us to share power with him. We will not be niggard in meting out to him ample authority, for the Italians are accommodating and not ungrateful; but we will not any longer support that eternal old lazy, tricky, tumble-down despotism which paralysed grey beards transmit from hand to hand. Each of these ruling and paralytic priests hands us over manacled hand and foot to the wickedest and worst of the College of Cardinals.

If a Cardinal Secretary might by any possibility himself become Pope, he might use his power honestly and mildly, if not ably or discreetly. But there is no instance of such a thing in modern times. Lambruschini and Consalvi tried their best to be elected popes, but with little success.

If the Pope were simply a Roman bishop chief of the Western Church; if he confined himself only to spiritual things, and eschewed temporal government, his countrymen of Rome, of Ancona, and of Bologna might govern themselves as we heretics do in London, and as those very pale-coloured papists, the French, do at Paris, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Nancy. The ad

1859.] ministration of the Finances of Justice, of the Police, of War, and of the Home Department, would then be carried on by laymen and not by priests, bishops, or cardinals. The Roman Catholics in communion with the Pope,according to M.About, number 139,000,000; and if every one of the faithful and orthodox subscribed a halfpenny a head, the chief of the one Holy Roman Apostolic Church would have a revenue of some £7,000,000-enough to provide for all the expences of the Church and Court of Rome, including even the repairs of St. Peter's.

It may be supposed that M. About speaks of the result of the French occupation of Rome: that result may be summed up in a few words. At Portici, Pius IX. promised the French Government the reform of certain. abuses mentioned in his motu proprio. Once established in his own capital, he eluded those promises. Nine years have since passed by, and though politely invited year by year to advance a little in the way of improvement by the French Government, the Pope has refused to budge an inch. Had the French soldiers retired from Rome three months ago, the Roman citizens told them they were themselves capable of winning all their rights; that is to say, the secularization of the Government, the proclamation of an amnesty, the Code Napoléon, and liberal institutions. Now it is too late to achieve these things, for the Austrians are in force at Ancona and in the Marches. What, then, has the French occupation of Rome for nearly ten years effected?

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Literally nothing in the way of good government. Left to themselves, the Romans, without either Austrians or French, might have redressed their wrongs. Now Austrians and French, or French and Austrians, will play off the Pope as Court Card against his subjects or against each other.

We have as little faith in French sympathy for Italy as we have in Austrian. France and Austria are both playing a game entirely selfish, and Italy is the battle-field on which they fight. We desire as much as any Italian patriot the freedom of Italy; but in the interest of Europe, of the world, and of France herself, we greatly more desiderate the freedom of France and restoration of her constitutional Government.

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There are difficulties in the Roman Question to which we are not insensible; but these difficulties are not wholly insuperable and are very capable of solution. Rome and the Roman Question are hackneyed subjects, yet M. About has thrown into his volume so much force and freshness, so much good sense and wisdom as well as wit, that he extorts conviction. The point and epigram of the style only serve to barb the weighty argument and the forcible reasoning of one of the most brilliant and able books it has been our fortune to read.

We need scarcely say that the statements put forth as facts in this article, and most of the strong things said as to the Papal Government, are given on the authority of M. About, from whose work we have rendered them into English.