g benefits, that his first acts held out the fairest
hopes to Italy and to Europe, that he has suffered the lingering
torture of exile, that he exercises a precarious and dependent royalty
under the protection of two foreign armies, and that he lives under
the control of a Cardinal. But those who have fallen victims to the
efforts made to replace him on his throne, those whom the Austrians
have, at his request, shot and sabred, in order to re-establish his
authority, and even those who toil in the plague-stricken plains of
the Roman Campagna to fill his treasury, are far more to be pitied
than he is.

Giovanni-Maria, dei Conti Mastai Ferretti, born the 13th May, 1792,
and elected Pope the 16th June, 1846, under the name of Pius IX., is a
man who looks more than his actual age; he is short, obese, somewhat
pallid, and in precarious health. His benevolent and sleepy
countenance breathes good-nature and lassitude, but has nothing of an
imposing character. Gregory XVI., though ugly and pimply, is said to
have had a grand air.

Pius IX. plays his part in the gorgeous shows of the Roman Catholic
Church indifferently well. The faithful who have come from afar to see
him perform Mass, are a little surprised to see him take a pinch of
snuff in the midst of the azure-tinted clouds of incense. In his hours
of leisure he plays at billiards for exercise, by order of his
physicians.

He believes in God. He is not only a good Christian, but a devotee. In
his enthusiasm for the Virgin Mary, he has invented a useless dogma,
and disfigured the Piazza di Spagna by a monument of bad taste. His
morals are pure, as they always have been, even when he was a young
priest: such instances are common enough among our clergy, but rare,
not to say miraculous, beyond the Alps.

He has nephews, who, wonderful to relate, are neither rich nor
powerful, nor even princes. And yet there is no law which prevents him
from spoiling his subjects for the benefit of his family. Gregory
XIII. gave his nephew Ludovisi L160,000 of good paper, worth so much
cash. The Borghese family bought at one stroke ninety-five farms with
the money of Paul V. A commission which met in 1640, under the
presidence of the Reverend Father Vitelleschi, General of the Jesuits,
decided, in order to put an end to such abuses, that the Popes should
confine themselves to entailing property to the amount of L16,000 a
year upon their favourite nephew and his family (with the right of