ain a republic in France, but I confess that the investment of Paris
by King William seems to me the logical sequence of the bombardment of
Rome by Oudinot. And is it not a significant fact that the terrible
chassepot, which made its first bloody experiment upon the halfarmed
Italian patriots without the walls of Rome, has failed in the hands of
French republicans against the inferior needle-gun of Prussia? It was
said of a fierce actor in the old French Revolution that he demoralized
the guillotine. The massacre at Mentana demoralized the chassepot.

It is a matter of congratulation that the redemption of Rome has been
effected so easily and bloodlessly. The despotism of a thousand years
fell at a touch in noiseless rottenness. The people of Rome, fifty to
one, cast their ballots of condemnation like so many shovelfuls of earth
upon its grave. Outside of Rome there seems to be a very general
acquiescence in its downfall. No Peter the Hermit preaches a crusade in
its behalf. No one of the great Catholic powers of Europe lifts a finger
for it. Whatever may be the feelings of Isabella of Spain and the
fugitive son of King Bomba, they are in no condition to come to its
rescue. It is reserved for American ecclesiastics, loud-mouthed in
professions of democracy, to make solemn protest against what they call
an "outrage," which gives the people of Rome the right of choosing their
own government, and denies the divine right of kings in the person of Pio
Nono.

The withdrawal of the temporal power of the Pope will prove a blessing to
the Catholic Church, as well as to the world. Many of its most learned
and devout priests and laymen have long seen the necessity of such a
change, which takes from it a reproach and scandal that could no longer
be excused or tolerated. A century hence it will have as few apologists
as the Inquisition or the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

In this hour of congratulation let us not forget those whose suffering
and self-sacrifice, in the inscrutable wisdom of Providence, prepared the
way for the triumph which we celebrate. As we call the long, illustrious
roll of Italian patriotism--the young, the brave, and beautiful; the
gray-haired, saintly confessors; the scholars, poets, artists, who, shut
out from human sympathy, gave their lives for God and country in the
slow, dumb agony of prison martyrdom--let us hope that they also rejoice
with us, and, inaudible to earthly ears, unite in our t