ome, sometimes, a great
counsel; and I write to you with so much love, with so much emotion of
my whole soul, with so much faith in the destiny of my country, which
may be revived by your means, that my thoughts ought to speak truth.

"And first, it is needful, Most Holy Father, that I should say to
you somewhat of myself. My name has probably reached your ears,
but accompanied by all the calumnies, by all the errors, by all the
foolish conjectures, which the police, by system, and many men of my
party through want of knowledge or poverty of intellect, have heaped
upon it. I am not a subverter, nor a communist, nor a man of blood,
nor a hater, nor intolerant, nor exclusive adorer of a system, or of
a form imagined by my mind. I adore God, and an idea which seems to me
of God,--Italy an angel of moral unity and of progressive civilization
for the nations of Europe. Here and everywhere I have written the best
I know how against the vices of materialism, of egotism, of reaction,
and against the destructive tendencies which contaminate many of
our party. If the people should rise in violent attack against the
selfishness and bad government of their rulers, I, while rendering
homage to the right of the people, shall be among the first to prevent
the excesses and the vengeance which long slavery has prepared. I
believe profoundly in a religious principle, supreme above all social
ordinances; in a divine order, which we ought to seek to realize here
on earth; in a law, in a providential design, which we all ought,
according to our powers, to study and to promote. I believe in the
inspiration of my immortal soul, in the teaching of Humanity, which
shouts to me, through the deeds and words of all its saints, incessant
progress for all through, the work of all my brothers toward a common
moral amelioration, toward the fulfilment of the Divine Law. And in
the great history of Humanity I have studied the history of Italy, and
have found there Rome twice directress of the world,--first through
the Emperors, later through the Popes. I have found there, that
every manifestation of Italian life has also been a manifestation of
European life; and that always when Italy fell, the moral unity
of Europe began to fall apart in analysis, in doubt, in anarchy.
I believe in yet another manifestation of the Italian idea; and I
believe that another European world ought to be revealed from the
Eternal City, that had the Capitol, and has the Vatic