rt, but from that heart distilled a
balm which made all men bless it, happy in finding cause to bless.

As in the moral little books with which our nurseries are entertained,
followed another death in violent contrast. One of those whom the new
arrangements deprived of power and the means of unjust gain was the
Cardinal Prince Massimo, a man a little younger than Don Carlo,
but who had passed his forty years in a very different manner.
He remonstrated; the Pope was firm, and, at last, is said to have
answered with sharp reproof for the past. The Cardinal contained
himself in the audience, but, going out, literally suffocated with the
rage he had suppressed. The bad blood his bad heart had been so
long making rushed to his head, and he died on his return home.
Men laughed, and proposed that all the widows he had deprived of a
maintenance should combine to follow _his_ bier. It was said boys
hissed as that bier passed. Now, a splendid suit of lace being for
sale in a shop of the Corso, everybody says: "Have you been to look
at the lace of Cardinal Massimo, who died of rage, because he could
no longer devour the public goods?" And this is the last echo of _his_
requiem.

The Pope is anxious to have at least well-intentioned men in places of
power. Men of much ability, it would seem, are not to be had. His last
prime minister was a man said to have energy, good dispositions, but
no thinking power. The Cardinal Bofondi, whom he has taken now, is
said to be a man of scarce any ability; there being few among the
new Councillors the public can name as fitted for important trust.
In consolation, we must remember that the Chancellor Oxenstiern found
nothing more worthy of remark to show his son, than by how little
wisdom the world could be governed. We must hope these men of straw
will serve as thatch to keep out the rain, and not be exposed to the
assaults of a devouring flame.

Yet that hour may not be distant. The disturbances of the 1st of
January here were answered by similar excitements in Leghorn and
Genoa, produced by the same hidden and malignant foe. At the same
time, the Austrian government in Milan organized an attempt to rouse
the people to revolt, with a view to arrests, and other measures
calculated to stifle the spirit of independence they know to be latent
there. In this iniquitous attempt they murdered eighty persons; yet
the citizens, on their guard, refused them the desired means of
ruin, and they were for