to make the shores of the Mediterranean hers.

She therefore encouraged Italy in revolution, and it is generally
believed that she secretly furnished enormous sums of money, through Sir
James Hudson, minister in Turin, to further the schemes of Mazzini. The
profound hatred of Catholics which was so much more marked in England
then than now, produced a strong popular feeling there in favour of the
revolutionaries, who inveighed against all existing sovereignties in
general, but were particularly bitter against the government of the
Popes. The revolution thus supported by England, and guided by such men
as Mazzini and Garibaldi, made progress. The legendary nature of Rome,
as mistress of the world, appealed also to many Italians, and 'Rome'
became the catchword of liberty. The situation was similar in other
European countries; secret societies were as active, and to the
revolutionaries the result seemed as certain.

But the material of monarchic opposition was stronger elsewhere than in
Italy. Prussia had Hohenzollerns and Austria had Hapsburgs--races that
had held their own and reigned successfully for hundreds of years. The
smaller German principalities had traditions of conservative obedience
to a prince, which were not easily broken. On the other hand, in Italy
the government of the Bourbons and their relatives was a barbarous
misrule, of which the only good point was that it did not oppress the
people with taxes, and in Rome the Pontifical chair had been occupied by
a succession of politically insignificant Popes from Pius the Seventh,
Napoleon's victim, to Gregory the Sixteenth. There was no force in Italy
to oppose the general revolutionary idea, except the conservatism of
individuals, in a country which has always been revolutionary. Much the
same was true of France. But in both countries there were would-be
monarchs waiting in the background, ready to promote any change whereby
they might profit--Louis Napoleon, and the Kings of Sardinia, Charles
Albert first, and after his defeat by the Austrians and his abdication,
the semi-heroic, semi-legendary Victor Emmanuel.

Gregory the Sixteenth died in 1846, and Pius the Ninth was elected in
his stead--a man still young, full of the highest ideals and of most
honest purpose; enthusiastic, a man who had begun life in military
service and was destined to end it in captivity, and upon whom it was
easy to impose in every way, since he was politically too credulous for
an