y eyes worth recording, and, if I
cannot help this work, I would gladly be its historian.

May 13.

Returning from a little tour in the Alban Mount, where everything
looks so glorious this glorious spring, I find a temporary quiet. The
Pope's brothers have come to sympathize with him; the crowd sighs over
what he has done, presents him with great bouquets of flowers, and
reads anxiously the news from the north and the proclamations of the
new ministry. Meanwhile the nightingales sing; every tree and plant
is in flower, and the sun and moon shine as if paradise were already
re-established on earth. I go to one of the villas to dream it is so,
beneath the pale light of the stars.

LETTER XXV.

REVIEW OF THE COURSE OF PIUS IX.--MAMIANI.--THE PEOPLE'S DISAPPOINTED
HOPES.--THE MONUMENTS IN MILAN, NAPLES, ETC.--THE KING OF NAPLES AND
HIS TROOPS.--CALAMITIES OF THE WAR.--THE ITALIAN PEOPLE.--CHARLES
ALBERT.--DEDUCTIONS.--SUMMER AMONG THE MOUNTAINS OF ITALY.

Rome, December 2, 1848.

I have not written for six months, and within that time what changes
have taken place on this side "the great water,"--changes of how
great dramatic interest historically,--of bearing infinitely important
ideally! Easy is the descent in ill.

I wrote last when Pius IX. had taken the first stride on the downward
road. He had proclaimed himself the foe of further reform measures,
when he implied that Italian independence was not important in his
eyes, when he abandoned the crowd of heroic youth who had gone to the
field with his benediction, to some of whom his own hand had given
crosses. All the Popes, his predecessors, had meddled with, most
frequently instigated, war; now came one who must carry out,
literally, the doctrines of the Prince of Peace, when the war was
not for wrong, or the aggrandizement of individuals, but to
redeem national, to redeem human, rights from the grasp of foreign
oppression.

I said some cried "traitor," some "imbecile," some wept, but In the
minds of all, I believe, at that time, grief was predominant. They
could no longer depend on him they had thought their best friend. They
had lost their father.

Meanwhile his people would not submit to the inaction he urged. They
saw it was not only ruinous to themselves, but base and treacherous
to the rest of Italy. They said to the Pope, "This cannot be; you
must follow up the pledges you have given, or, if you will not act to
redeem them, you must have a