It is not the private character of the man that has now so much interest for the world. While we question the taste with which Mr. Trollope characterises the main motives of the Pontiff, we think that it is only by the use of a certain English plainness, not to say brutality, of speech that this author

has erred-not at all on the side of an undue depreciation of character. There are not a few circumstances which from time to time became familiar to residents in Italy during the pontificate of Pius the Ninth, which throw far darker shades on his portrait than the somewhat vulgar colour freely laid on by the biographer. For the flight from Rome to Gaeta it might be a wise and politic blind that a lady, as mentioned by Mr. Trollope, should be of the party. But for that same lady to be a resident in the Palace of Portici, which was placed at the disposal of the Pontiff by the King of Naples, during the abode there of his Holiness, and that in the presence of the well-known want of charity as to right motives for such associations that is an essential feature of the South Italian character, is one of those errors which it is difficult, from any point of view, to excuse. The name of

Cardinal Andrea will not readily be forgotten by those who remember the persistent tyranny that forbad him to leave Rome when his physicians declared that his life depended on his removal to a purer air. The constant support and encouragement that every attempt to impede and to trouble the newv-born unity of Italy met from Rome, may, perhaps, be passed over as a part of the necessity of the situation. Machiavelli had stated in plain language that if Northern and Southern Italy ever fell under the same temporal sceptre, the power of the Papacy would be at an end. The instinct of self-preservation is as keen in kings, as kings, as it is in private men, as private men. It thus has not unfrequently happened in the course of history that a reigning prince, in other respects a feeble or a stupid man, has taken a far juster view of the necessities of his own position than has been done by the keenest minister of State. We have, within the last few days, seen fresh and graceful proof how much more just and profound was the conception of political events, and of the course which they indicated to be due to the national honour and safety, formed by a Sovereign who was little more than a girl, and by her still youthful husband, than that entertained by the grayest beards that wagged in Parliament, or by the most experienced ministers who held the seals of office. Resistance to Italian unity, on the part of the Pope, may well be regarded as synonymous with resistance to the approaches of an avowed murderer. None the less did the mode in which that resistance was kept up -when it was matter, not of open policy, but of underhand suggestion, burn a deep hatred against the Pope into the hearts

of those who received him in 1848-49 with little short of divine honour.

Over these, and some other like points, Mr. Trollope has passed in silence, or with light hand. The impeachment which is to be gathered from his writing lies first against the candour and truthfulness of the Bishop of Imola; and a charge of that nature will not be likely to extract from an Italian reader more than a deprecatory shrug of the shouldersunless it be an outward movement of the hands, and perhaps the words, "Ma-ma-ma!" In later years, how far the action of the Pope has been automatic, in the simple sense of the word, and how far that of an automaton, will probably remain untold by the historian. It is a very curious fact that the Catholics of Italy attribute to the visible head of their religion that quality of which they entertain the most real and lively terror. The Pope is credited with having the evil eye. Strange things are witnessed, and stranger are told, throughout Italy, of those gifted with this goblin power. The present writer can give an instance that occurred within his own knowledge of the mode in I which the belief was held in the highest society in that country. On a morning visit to a Royal person in Naples, the visible consternation and trouble which perturbed the whole circle was so great that, on receiving permission to withdraw, the writer eagerly asked his companion what was amiss. "Did you not see the Marchese come into the room? The greatest jettatore (a caster of the evil eye) in Naples !" There was a ball then pending at the Palace, to attend which all those in the room in question had received commands. By a prudent forgetfulness, the maggior-duomo

He

maggiore, or Lord High Chamberlain, had omitted to send cards to the nobleman in question. wrote politely to the Chamberlain, informing him that, by some inadvertence, he had not received cards for the ball, and requesting that they might be sent. The Chamberlain, in dismay, laid the letter before the King. "We can't help it, Bisignano," said his Majesty. "He won't take a hint. Of course he has a right to be asked. You can't refuse him. You must send him his cards. But you'll see that the ball will not take place." Neither did it, for in the week that had then still to elapse before the day fixed, one of the gracious and amiable princesses-sisters of the King, who were so deservedly loved and respected-unexpectedly died.

It will be admitted, even by those who hold a belief in the evil eye to be a malignant superstition, that it is not one of those attributes that would very naturally be assigned to any one, especially to a high ecclesiastic, without some obvious reason. Perhaps the best outcome of the study of the subject is the opinion that a certain clumsy maladroitness is a characteristic of some people, which leads them continually to do mischief, even without any intention so to do. This is the most rational, or rationalistic, view of the case. But even this is singularly unhappy for a Pope.

Whether, however, in the words of the Gospel, and according to the belief of the Italians, the eye of Pius the Ninth was evil, or not, there can be no question that his whole career as a Pontiff has tended to confirm the imputation. Misfortune has dogged his footsteps, haunted his friends, and scrupulously avoided those smitten by his maledictions. First, in

made him the master of his brethren.

It was an evil choice for Rome and for the Church. It was, let us hope, one of those evils which effect good for Italy and for the world. At a moment in which the traditional counsel which had reared the Papal throne to its lofty eminence was more requisite than at any previous crisis, that throne was ascended by a man who took counsel first of his own vanity, and then of those still more dangerous advisers who flattered that master passion. In these two lines lies the clue to the disasters of the Papacy under the pontificate of Pius the Ninth.

Italy was well known to be honeycombed with secret associations. The Church, as we have learned from the careful announcements of Pius the Ninth himself, tars with the same brush the Carbonaro, the Freemason, and the subscriber to the Bible Society. A Freemason himself, Mastai Ferretti may, perhaps, have imagined that the secret societies which drew their inspiration from Mazzini, or from even more dangerous enthusiasts, were not, in real truth, more hostile to law, order, and national welfare than were the members of that most ancient and most honourable confraternity. At all events, his first actions as Pope applied the match to a train that had long been ready to explode. "The new Pontiff was exhibiting to the world," says Mr. Trollope, "the startling, unknown, and significant phenomenon of a popular Pope. And Austria was beginning to realise the fact that those hours of Gaysruck's delay at Milan had been somewhat portentous in the history of the world."

We refer the reader to the pages of Mr. Trollope for the story of the change that followed. It is It is

told with fair knowledge of the events, and appreciation of their connexion and importance. We can only glance at the results. First was the flight to Gaetathe virtual abdication of Papal sovereignty. Under the hospitality of King Ferdinand the Second, if the Pope neither learned nor forgot much, he at least discovered on what allies he could alone lean. That portly sovereign, excelled only by the colossal Nicholas of Russia in height and stature, prostrated himself at full length on the ground before the fugitive Pope. His Holiness's residence in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was a continual triumph, from which he went back to impose the iron yoke of the travestied fisherman of Galilee on the Romans, by aid of the bayonets of Imperial France. The masquerade in which a tinsel Charlemagne re-conferred the rule of Rome on a mock Gregory, would have been irresistibly ludicrous, had it not been attended by so much bloodshed.

Living under the protection of the French bayonets, owing his status, if not his life, to the mystic adventurer to whose wife and child Pius the Ninth afterwards enjoyed the luxury of shewing an ingratitude eminently Papal, an unusual locus penitentia was given to the restored Pontiff. How he availed himself of the opportunity let Mr. Trollope tell. The first shock of the earthquake that overthrew the thronelets of Italy, and the antique chair-a Mohammedan piece of art, bearing the inscription in Arabic, "There is no God but, God, and Mohammed is His Prophet "—of St. Peter, made itself felt on parently trivial occasion. Conducting his semi-idiotic son, Francis, afterwards the second of that name, to meet his bright and spirited bride at Bari, King Fer

an ap

dinand the Second was stricken by the intense cold of the season in his passage over the Appenines. The road, excellent as his care had made it, was blocked with snow. The King alighted, and walked for a portion of the way. The peasants, when the Royal train came near a village, spread their cloaks and bedding for the Royal footcloth. But it was of no avail. The King never again held up his head. And the minute guns which, after his painful return to Portici by sea in the following year, announced the decease of Ferdinand the Second, pealed the knell of the royalties of Parma, Modena, Tuscany, Naples, Rome, and of their great cognate support, the Austrian Power in Italy. The French Emperor was compensating Italy for his maintenance of the Pope by his attack on the Holy Roman Empire. Of all that followed the story has yet to be told in a manner becoming the gravity, and at the same time adorned by the graces, of a great historian. It has been told by a great novelist; but the constant interposition of the claim quorum pars magna fui is enough to indispose the English reader to take his account of these stirring events from Alexandre Dumas. The advance of Garibaldi, which was more like a series of incidents from a fairy legend than those of a chapter of European history, would have come to a speedy close, over and over again, had a single frigate, or a single regiment, of the navy and army of the Two Sicilies, upheld the honour of their flag. The intervention of King Victor Emmanuel, when at last General Fanti crossed the frontier, was a sheer act of humanity forced on Sardinia, against the wishes of all the northern statesmen, and rendered necessary to prevent the Sicilian Vespers that would have

followed when the vengeance of the reaction had its course-invited as it was by the miserable incompetence of Garibaldi and his motley crew. It was the opinion of Cavour, the maker of Italy, that the incorporation of the barbaric elements composing the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies would materially thwart and delay the consolidation of the more civilised people of the North. Events have justified the hesitation of the Italian statesman. But the one cry that rang through Italy, from the Alps to the Ionian Sea, was Viva Italia Una. The people, or rather the many distinct peoples, of that geographical expressionItaly-uttered that cry from their very hearts, with all the peculiar energy of their Southern blood. There was nothing to be done but to attempt to "make Italy," although wise men would have wished to defer the operation for another quarter of a century. And in the making of Italy the case foreseen by Machiavelli occurred. Rome was wanted-and the Pope-King had to go.

It was in the interval that elapsed between the fall of the Bourbon dynasty at Naples and the disastrous extinction of the Buonaparte comedy at Sedan, that Pius the Ninth threw away the grandest opportunity for consolidating a spiritual throne that was ever offered to a Bishop of Rome. A man who stands on the lofty eminence of sovereign power has the opportunity of throwing more far-sighted and piercing glances around him, and thus of more surely anticipating coming events, than any other human being, with the exception, perhaps, of a great minister of State. And even the greatest minister, owing to the short and uncertain tenure of office which is often more marked in constitutional than even in