a man is despised. All the people compare him with Pius VII. saying to the French, “Slay me if you will; I cannot yield,” and feel the difference.
I was on Monte Cavallo yesterday. The common people were staying at the broken windows and burnt door of the palace where they have so often gone to receive a blessing, the children playing, “Sedia Papale. Morte ai Cardinali, e morte al Papa!”
The men of straw are going down in Italy everywhere; the real men rising into power. Montanelli, Guerazzi, Mazzini, are real men; their influence is of character. Had we only been born a little later! Mazzini has returned from his seventeen years’ exile, “to see what he foresaw.” He has a mind far in advance of his times, and yet Mazzini sees not all.
Rome, May 7, 1848. — Good and loving hearts will
be unprepared, and for a time must suffer much from
the final dereliction of Pius IX. to the cause of freedom.
After the revolution opened in Lombardy, the troops of
the line were sent thither; the volunteers rushed to
accompany them, the priests preached the war as a crusade,
the Pope blessed the banners. The report that the
Austrians had taken and hung as a brigand one of the
Roman Civic Guard, — a well-known artist engaged in
the war of Lombardy, — roused the people; and they
went to the Pope, to demand that he should declare war
against the Austrians. The Pope summoned a consistory,
and then declared in his speech that he had only
intended local reforms; that he regretted the misuse
that had been made of his name; and wound up by
lamenting the war as offensive to the spirit of religion. A
momentary stupefaction, followed by a passion of indig-
