l be said,
"de torrente in viabibet propterea exaltabit caput." (They shall be
reduced to quench their thirst in the mountain stream, and therefore shall
be exalted.) The delegates of the Holy Father were received with
enthusiasm by the South American populations. Meanwhile, the narrow
governments that were set over those countries raised so many difficulties
that the mission was only partially successful.

This mission, however, was not without benefit to the Reverend Count
Mastai. It had been the means of developing the admirable qualities which
he possessed. It had afforded him the opportunity of seeing many cities,
as well as the manners and customs of many people. These lessons of travel
were not addressed to an ordinary mind. His views were enlarged, elevated
and refined by contact with so many rising or fallen civilizations, so
many different nationalities, and by the spectacle of Nature, that
admirable handmaid of the Divinity, with her varied splendors and her
manifold wonders, astonishing no less in the immensity of the ocean than
in the vast forests of the New World.

The mind appears to grow as the sphere of material life extends. Vast
horizons are adapted to great souls, and prepare them for great things.
The Abbe Mastai had thus received in his youth two most salutary lessons,
which are often wanting to the best-tried virtues of the sacerdotal
state--the lesson of the world, which Mastai had received before the time
of his vocation to Holy Orders, and the lessons of travel, which
disengages the mind from the bondage of local prejudices. Both of these
teachers he admirably understood. He had, indeed, drank of the torrent
which exalts.

Leo XII. now filled the Apostolic Chair. This Pontiff, highly appreciating
the good sense and penetration of which Mastai had given proof in the
difficult mission to Chili, appointed him Canon of Sancta Maria, Rome, _in
via lata_, and, at the same time, conferred on him the dignity of Prelate.
Never was the Roman purple more adorned by the learning and genuine virtue
of him on whom it was bestowed.

There is at Rome an institution of charity, the greatest which that city
or even the world possesses, the immense hospital of _St. Michael a Ripa
Grande_. A whole people dwells within its vast precincts. It is at once a
place of retreat for aged and infirm men, a most extensive professional
school for poor girls, and a sort of workshop, on a great scale, for
children that have