summer-house in the garden of the Vatican. He was sitting on a sofa, and
made me sit beside him. His manners were simple and very gracious; he
spoke freely of what he had suffered in France. He said, "God forbid
that he should bear ill-will to any one; but the journey and the cold
were trying to an old man, and he was glad to return to a warm climate
and to his own country." When we took leave, he said to me, "Though a
Protestant, you will be none the worse for an old man's blessing." Pius
the Seventh was loved and respected; the people knelt to him as he
passed. Many years afterwards we were presented to Gregory the
Sixteenth, a very common-looking man, forming a great contrast to Pius
the Seventh.

I heard more good music during this first visit to Rome than I ever did
after; for besides that usual in St. Peter's, there was an Academia
every week, where Marcello's Psalms were sung in concert by a number of
male voices, besides other concerts, private and public. We did not make
the acquaintance of any of the Roman families at this time; but we saw
Pauline Borghese, sister of the Emperor Napoleon, so celebrated for her
beauty, walking on the Pincio every afternoon. Our great geologist, Sir
Roderick Murchison, with his wife, were among the English residents at
Rome. At that time he hardly knew one stone from another. He had been an
officer in the Dragoons, an excellent horseman, and a keen fox-hunter.
Lady Murchison,--an amiable and accomplished woman, with solid
acquirements which few ladies at that time possessed--had taken to the
study of geology; and soon after her husband began that career which has
rendered him the first geologist of our country. It was then that a
friendship began between them and us, which will only end with life.
Mrs. Fairfax, of Gilling Castle, and her two handsome daughters were
also at Rome. She was my namesake--Mary Fairfax--and my valued friend
till her death. Now, alas! many of these friends are gone.

There were such troops of brigands in the Papal States, that it was
considered unsafe to go outside the gates of Rome. They carried off
people to the mountains, and kept them till ransomed; sometimes even
mutilated them, as they do at the present day in the kingdom of Naples.
Lucien Bonaparte made a narrow escape from being carried off from his
villa, Villa Ruffinella, near Frascati. When it could be proved that
brigands had committed murder, they were confined in prisons in the
Maremma, a