he Pope, they long and ruthlessly laboured to
exterminate, their country would have been at this day in the same
gulph of social demoralization and political re-action with Tuscany, and
Naples, and Rome. These last were taken, and Piedmont escaped.

And the country is truly flourishing. It has thriven every day since
Charles Albert emancipated the Vaudois. No one can cross its frontier
without being struck with the contrast it presents to the other Italian
States. While they are decaying like a corpse, it is flourishing like
the chestnut-tree of its own mountains. The very faces of the people may
tell you that the country is free and prosperous. Its citizens walk
about with the cheerful, active air of men who have something to do and
to enjoy, and not with the listless, desponding, heart-sick look which
marks the inhabitants of the other States of Italy. Here, too, you miss
that universal beggary and vagabondism that disfigure and pollute all
the other countries of the Peninsula. What rich loam the ploughman turns
up! What magnificent vines shade its plains! Public works are in
progress, railways have been formed, and new houses are building. Not
fewer than a hundred houses were built in Turin last year, which is
more, I verily believe, than in all the other Italian towns out of
Piedmont taken together. Thus, while the other States of Italy are
foundering in the tempest, Piedmont lives because it carries the Vaudois
and their fortunes.

From the hall of the Chamber of Deputies I went with M. Malan to the
office of the _Gazetta del Popolo_, to be introduced to its editors. The
_Gazetta del Popolo_ is a daily paper, with a circulation of 15,000;
and, being sold at a penny, is universally read by the middle and lower
classes. It is the _Times_ of Piedmont. Its editors are men of great
talent, and write with the practical good sense and racy style of
Cobbett. They are not religious men, neither are they Romanists, though
nominally connected with the Church of the State; but they are warm
advocates of constitutional government, hearty haters of the Papacy, and
have done much to enlighten the public mind, and loosen it from
Romanism. They first of all made inquiries respecting the external
resemblance of Puseyistic and Popish worship, as I had seen the latter
in Italy. They made yet more eager inquiries respecting the progress and
prospects of Puseyism in England, and about a then recent declaration of
the Archbishop of Cant