nsters of crime; but their capricious tyranny, while
it fell heavily on individuals, left the great body of the empire
comparatively untouched. But the tyranny of the Pope penetrates every
home, and crushes every person and thing. There was not under Nero a
tenth part of the misery in Rome which there is now. Were the acts of
Nero and of Pio to be fully written, I have not a doubt,--I am
certain,--that the government of the imperial despot would be seen to be
liberty itself, compared with the measureless, remorseless,
inappeasable, wide-wasting tyranny of the sacerdotal one. The diadem was
light indeed, compared with the tiara. The little finger of the Popes is
thicker than the loins of the Caesars. The sights I saw, and the facts I
heard, actually poisoned my enjoyment of Rome. What pleasure could I
take in statues and monuments, when I saw the wretched beings that
lived beside them, and marked the faces on which despair was painted,
the forms that grief had bowed to the very dust, the dead men who
wandered in the streets and about the old ruins, as if they sought, but
could not find, their graves? Ah! there _is_ not, there never _was_, on
earth a tyranny like the Papacy. But let me come to particulars.

I shall first narrate the story of Colonel Calendrelli. It was told me
by our own consul in Rome, Mr Freeborn, who knew intimately the colonel,
and deeply interested himself in his case. Colonel Calendrelli was
treasurer at war during the Republic. The Republic came to an end; the
Pontifical Government returned; and Colonel Calendrelli, being unable to
get away along with the other agents and friends of the Republic, was,
of course, apprehended by the restored Government. It was necessary to
find some pretext on which to condemn the colonel; and what, does the
reader think, was the charge preferred against Colonel Calendrelli? Why,
it was this, that the colonel had embezzled the public funds to the
amount of twenty scudi. Twenty scudi! How much is that? Only five pounds
sterling! That Colonel Calendrelli, a gentleman, a scholar, a man on
whose honesty a breath had never been blown, should risk character and
liberty for five pounds sterling! Why, the Pontifical Government should
have made it five hundred or five thousand pounds, if they wished to
have the accusation believed. Well, then, on the charge of defrauding
the public treasury to the extent of twenty Roman scudi was Colonel
Calendrelli brought to trial, and conde