supplies of those great virtues? I confess
it was not always so. His severity was formerly ever on the side of
justice; it was indignation at crime or baseness which sometimes brought
upon him the charge of cruelty--never the wanton infliction of suffering
and death. But it certainly is not so now. A slight cause now rouses
his sleeping passions to a sudden fury, often fatal to the first object
that comes in his way. But enough of this.

Do not forget to tell me again of the Old Hermit of the mountains, and
that you have visited him--if indeed he be yet among the living.

Even with your lively imagination, Fausta, you can hardly form an idea
of the sensation which my open assertion of Christian principles and
assumption of the Christian name has made in Rome. I intended when I sat
down to speak only of this, but see how I have been led away! My letters
will be for the most part confined, I fear, to the subjects which
engross both myself and Julia most--such as relate to the condition and
prospects of the new religion, and to the part which we take in the
revolution which is going on. Not that I shall be speechless upon other
and inferior topics, but that upon this of Christianity I shall be
garrulous and overflowing. I believe that in doing this, I shall consult
your preferences as well as my own. I know you to be desirous of
principles better than any which as yet you have been able to discover,
and that you will gladly learn whatever I may have it in my power to
teach you from this quarter. But all the teaching I shall attempt will
be to narrate events as they occur, and state facts as they arise, and
leave them to make what impression they may.

When I just spoke of the sensation which my adoption of the Christian
system had caused in Rome, I did not mean to convey any idea like this,
that it has been rare for the intelligent and cultivated to attach
themselves to this despised religion. On the contrary, it would be true
were I to say, that they who accept Christianity, are distinguished for
their intelligence; that estimated as a class, they rank far above the
lowest. It is not the dregs of a people who become reformers of
philosophy or religion; who grow dissatisfied with ancient opinions upon
exalted subjects, and search about for better, and adopt them. The
processes involved in this change, in their very nature, require
intelligence, and imply a character of more than common elevation. It is
neither the lowest