st embroidered mantle of words. Still,
for a time, he corresponded with the wants of the Italian mind. He
assailed the Jesuits, and was of real use by embodying the distrust
and aversion that brooded in the minds of men against these most
insidious and inveterate foes of liberty and progress. This triumph,
at least, he may boast: that sect has been obliged to yield; its
extinction seems impossible, of such life-giving power was the fiery
will of Loyola. In the Primate he had embodied the lingering hope of
the Catholic Church; Pius IX. had answered to the appeal, had answered
only to show its futility. He had run through Italy as courier for
Charles Albert, when the so falsely styled Magnanimous entered,
pretending to save her from the stranger, really hoping to take her
for himself. His own cowardice and treachery neutralized the hope, and
Charles Albert, abject in his disgrace, took a retrograde ministry.
This the country would not suffer, and obliged him after a while
to reassume at least the position of the previous year, by taking
Gioberti for his premier. But it soon became evident that the ministry
of Charles Albert was in the same position as had been that of Pius
IX. The hand was powerless when the head was indisposed. Meantime the
name of Mazzini had echoed through Tuscany from the revered lips
of Montanelli; it reached the Roman States, and though at first
propagated by foreign impulse, yet, as soon as understood, was
welcomed as congenial. Montanelli had nobly said, addressing Florence:
"We could not regret that the realization of this project should take
place in a sister city, still more illustrious than ours." The Romans
took him at his word; the Constitutional Assembly for the Roman States
was elected with a double mandate, that the deputies might sit in the
Constitutional Assembly for all Italy whenever the other provinces
could send theirs. They were elected by universal suffrage. Those who
listened to Jesuits and Moderates predicted that the project would
fail of itself. The people were too ignorant to make use of the
liberty of suffrage.

But ravens now-a-days are not the true prophetic birds. The Roman
eagle recommences her flight, and it is from its direction only that
the high-priest may draw his augury. The people are certainly as
ignorant as centuries of the worst government, the neglect of popular
education, the enslavement of speech and the press, could make them;
yet they have an instinct to