s. Under the foreign
head were chronicled the consecration of Catholic temples, the visits of
royal personages, a profound silence being observed on all political
facts and speculations. And this is all the Romans can know, through
legitimate channels, of what is going on beyond the walls of Rome. A
daily paper was started during the Republic, and admirably managed; but,
of course, it was suppressed on the return of the Papal Government. A
few copies of the _Times_ reach Rome every morning. They are not given
out till towards mid-day, for they must first be read; and if the
"editorials" are not to the taste of the Sacred College, they are not
given out at all. The paper, during my short stay, was stopped for
nearly a week on end; and the disappointment was the greater, that
rumours were then current in Rome that something was on the tapis in
Paris, and that the change in the constitution of France, whatever it
might be, would not be postponed till the May of 1852, as was then
believed in the north of Europe, but would be attempted in the beginning
of December 1851. The tidings of the _coup d'etat_, which met me on the
morning of the 3d December in the south of France, brought the full
realization of these rumours. In the _Giornale di Roma_ not a strayed
dog can be advertised without permission of the censor. In Brescia there
is a censorship for gravestones; and in Rome a strict watch is kept over
the English burying-ground, lest any one should write a verse of
Scripture above a heretic's grave. The expression of thought is more
dreaded than brigandage.

Those who aspire to the learned professions go to the Collegio Romano.
But let the reader mark how the Roman Church here, as everywhere else,
contrives to keep up the show of educating, and takes care all the while
to impart the smallest possible amount of knowledge,--constructs a
machinery which, through some mischievous perversion, is without
results. The Collegio Romano has a numerous staff of professors, who
prelect on theology, logic, history, mathematics, natural philosophy,
and other branches. This looks well; but observe its working. All the
lectures are delivered in Latin, which differs considerably from the
modern Italian; and as the Roman youth spend only one year in the study
of the Latin tongue before entering the Collegio Romano, the lectures
might nearly as well, so far as the run of the students is concerned, be
in Arabic. Nine-tenths of the young men lea