he popular King whose great individual influence was
of more value to the cause of a united monarchy than all the political
clubs and organisations in Italy put together. He was a strong man. He
only once, I think, yielded to the pressure of a popular excitement,
namely, in the matter of seizing Rome when the French troops were
withdrawn, thereby violating a ratified Treaty. But his position was a
hard one. He regretted the apparent necessity, and to the day of his
death he never would sleep under the roof of Pius the Ninth's Palace on
the Quirinal, but had his private apartments in an adjoining building.
He was brave and generous. Such faults as he had were no burden to the
nation and concerned himself alone. The same praise may be worthily
bestowed upon his successor, but the personal influence is no longer the
same, any more than that of Leo XIII. can be compared with that of Pius
IX., though all the world is aware of the present Pope's intellectual
superiority and lofty moral principle.

Let us try to be just. The unification of Italy has been the result of a
noble conception. The execution of the scheme has not been without
faults, and some of these faults have brought about deplorable, even
disastrous, consequences, such as to endanger the stability of the new
order. The worst of these attendant errors has been the sudden
imposition of a most superficial and vicious culture, under the name of
enlightenment and education. The least of the new Government's mistakes
has been a squandering of the public money, which, when considered with
reference to the country's resources, has perhaps no parallel in the
history of nations.

Yet the first idea was large, patriotic, even grand. The men who first
steered the ship of the state were honourable, disinterested,
devoted--men like Minghetti, who will not soon be forgotten--loyal,
conservative monarchists, whose thoughts were free from exaggeration,
save that they believed almost too blindly in the power of a
constitution to build up a kingdom, and credited their fellows almost
too readily with a purpose as pure and blameless as their own. Can more
be said for these? I think not. They rest in honourable graves, their
doings live in honoured remembrance--would that there had been such
another generation to succeed them.

And having said thus much, let us return to the individuals who have
played a part in the history of the Saracinesca. They have grown older,
some gracefull