easoning reverence, was drawn
up by the authorities. Only a dozen students out of the 400 to 500 of
whom the college consists volunteered to sign it. The students were then
summoned in a body before the rector, and requested to add their
signatures. For this purpose the address was left in their hands, but
instead of being signed it was torn to pieces, and the fragments
scattered about the lecture-room, amidst a chorus of shouts and groans.
With the sort of senile folly which characterized all the proceedings of
the Vatican at this period, the affair, instead of being passed
unnoticed, was taken up seriously, and assumed in consequence an utterly
uncalled-for notoriety. The college was closed for the day, several of
the pupils were summoned before the police, an official inquiry was
instituted into the demonstration, and the matter became the talk of
Rome.

Of course at once a dozen contradictory rumours were in circulation, and
it was with considerable difficulty that I obtained the above narrative
of the occurrence, which I know to be substantially correct. As a
curious instance of how facts are perverted at Rome by theological bias,
I would mention here that when I made some inquiries on the subject from
an English gentleman, a recent convert, and I need hardly add a most
virulent partizan of the Papal rule, who was in a position to know the
truth about the matter, I was told by him, that there had undoubtedly
been a demonstration at the Sapienza, but that the truth was, the
students were so indignant at the outrages committed against his
Holiness, that they drew up an address of their own accord, expressive of
their devotion to the Pope, and that upon the rector refusing his consent
to the presentation of the address, on the ground that they were too
young to take any part in political matters, they vented by tumultuous
shouts their dissatisfation at this somewhat ill-timed interference. Now,
not only was there such an inherent improbability about this story, to
any one at all acquainted with Roman feelings or Papal policy, that it
scarcely needed refutation, but subsequent events proved it to be
entirely devoid of foundation in fact, and yet it was told me in good
faith by a person who had every means of knowing the truth if he had
chosen. The anecdote thus forms a curious illustration of the manner in
which stories are got up and circulated in Rome.

The result of the inquiry was that seven or eight of the