paid
for them; and yet the other day in Nice several houses were searched by
the gendarmes, and all Bibles and tracts carried away. This is contrary
to the Constitution of the country, and yet it was done. Englishmen will
make a cry about it, and demand justice (a thing generally sold to the
highest bidder); but it is no use,--only harm will be done by it. Every
day things in _kind_ differing in _degree_ are done throughout the
State. The long and short of the matter is this; the minds of the people
must open, and be allowed time to open gradually, ere the liberal
Constitution of Sardinia can be applied to its full extent. And it is
the forgetting this, or not knowing it, that usually brings these things
about. Something, perhaps a very common thing, and quite lawful, and
done every day, is done in a foolish way, and a foolish thing is done by
the executive Government to meet it. It is not the present
generation,--it has been too long under the yoke,--but the rising
generation, that will exhibit the new Constitution. The grand secret is
to do as much as possible,--and almost anything may be done,--and say
nothing about it. It is truly interesting to watch the gradual opening
up of the long shut kingdom, and very exciting to give every day a
stronger blow to the wedge that opens it. I remember well, when I came
here, nearly two years ago, Italian Bibles could not be got into Genoa,
as other goods, by paying the duty on them, although it was perfectly
lawful then, as now, to bring them in that way. For a year past we have
got all the Bibles the Bible-senders of Britain will send us. Hundreds
or thousands of them can be brought through the custom-house without any
difficulty. We are anxiously waiting the arrival of six thousand at this
moment. And yet a month has not passed since four thousand religious
books,--less mischievous by far than the Bible,--were sent from our port
to Marseilles. They could not be landed in any part of his Majesty's
dominions. From these facts you will see that we live in a kingdom of
practical contradictions.

"The priests, meanwhile, are by no means idle. They are instructing
their people in the dogmas of their Church; and for this they have
classes in the evening,--the zealous at least, among them have. Apart
from their petty persecution in preventing us getting a place of worship
(the affair of the 'Madre di Dio' you know all about, as also their
general story of every convert being paid), th