e or reason, you cease to take
thought of anything, in order to speculate idly when, if ever, there is
likely to be an end. There is no variety, and little change, too, about
the ceremonies. When you have seen one you have seen all; and when you
have seen them once, you can understand how to the Romans themselves
these sights have become stale and dull, till they look upon them much as
I fancy the musician in the orchestra of the old Princess's must have
looked upon one of Kean's Shaksperian revivals when the season was far
spent.

CHAPTER XVI. ISOLATION OF ROME.

There is, I think, no city in the world where Pilate's question, "What is
truth?" would be so hard to answer as in Rome. In addition to the
ordinary difficulties which everywhere beset the path of the foreigner in
search of knowledge, there are a number of obstacles peculiar and special
to Rome alone.

The whole policy of the government is directed towards maintaining the
country in a state of isolation, towards drawing, in fact, a moral
_cordon sanitaire_ round the Papal dominions. Indeed, if one lived long
in Rome, one would get to doubt the reality of anything. When I last
came to Rome straight from Tuscany, seething in the turmoil of its new-
bought liberties, I could hardly believe that only six months ago there
had been war in Italy within two hundred miles from the Papal city, that
the fate of Italy still hung trembling in the balance, and that the chief
province of the country was still in open revolt against its rulers.
There was no sign, no trace, scarce a symptom even of what had passed or
was passing in the world without. We all seemed spellbound in a dull,
dead, dreary circle. There were no advertisements in the streets, except
of devotional works for the coming season of Lent; no pamphlets or books
placed in the booksellers' windows, which by their titles even implied
the existence of the war and the revolution; no prints for sale of the
scenes of the campaign, or the popular heroes of the day. This was the
normal state of Rome, such as I had seen it in former years. Later on,
indeed, either the force of events, or a change in the counsels of the
Vatican, induced the Papacy to drop the defensive passive attitude which
constituted its real strength, and to adopt an active offensive policy,
which served rather to show the greatness of the dreaded danger than to
avert its occurrence. Still the increased animation, though percept