man still plays amid his serious affairs, and very serious have
they been this past winter. The Roman legions went out singing and
dancing to fight in Lombardy, and they fought no less bravely for
that.

When I wrote last, the Pope had fled, guided, he says, "by the hand
of Providence,"--Italy deems by the hand of Austria,--to Gaeta. He
had already soiled his white robes, and defamed himself for ever,
by heaping benedictions on the king of Naples and the bands of
mercenaries whom he employs to murder his subjects on the least sign
of restlessness in their most painful position. Most cowardly had been
the conduct of his making promises he never meant to keep, stealing
away by night in the coach of a foreign diplomatist, protesting that
what he had done was null because he had acted under fear,--as if
such a protest could avail to one who boasts himself representative
of Christ and his Apostles, guardian of the legacy of the martyrs! He
selected a band of most incapable men to face the danger he had feared
for himself; most of these followed his example and fled. Rome sought
an interview with him, to see if reconciliation were possible; he
refused to receive her messengers. His wicked advisers calculated upon
great confusion and distress as inevitable on the occasion; but,
for once, the hope of the bad heart was doomed to immediate
disappointment. Rome coolly said, "If you desert me,--if you will not
hear me,--I must act for myself." She threw herself into the arms of
a few men who had courage and calmness for this crisis; they bade her
think upon what was to be done, meanwhile avoiding every excess that
could give a color to calumny and revenge. The people, with admirable
good sense, comprehended and followed up this advice. Never was Rome
so truly tranquil, so nearly free from gross ill, as this winter. A
few words of brotherly admonition have been more powerful than all the
spies, dungeons, and scaffolds of Gregory.

"The hand of the Omnipotent works for us," observed an old man whom I
saw in the street selling cigars the evening before the opening of the
Constitutional Assembly. He was struck by the radiant beauty of the
night. The old people observe that there never has been such a winter
as this which follows the establishment by the French of a republic.

May the omens speed well! A host of enemies without are ready to levy
war against this long-suffering people, to rivet anew their chains.
Still there is now an