and not of much value were
the articles to be sold; for the fathers are not men to take no heed
of those shadows which coming events cast before them, and they had
long foreseen that their day in Rome was at an end, and had contrived
to leave as little as might be to the spoiler. None the less was it a
strange sight, as I say, to see the _profanum vulgus_ of the buyers
of old furniture, and the still more numerous herd of the curious,
looking on with very diversified feelings--some with bitterness enough
in their hearts--pushing and tramping through those noble corridors
and vast halls and secret cells, on which no profane gaze had rested
for more than three hundred years.

There has been abundance of doubt, but no difficulty, in disposing of
the great number of buildings which have thus come into the possession
of the nation. Many of the smaller convents have been sold in the same
manner as the other property of the ousted communities. But this has
not been done--and indeed could hardly have been done--in the case of
the larger buildings; and there has been a competition very much in
the nature of a scramble for the appropriation of them by the heads of
the several governmental departments. That of Public Instruction, now
worthily represented by Signor Bonghi, has succeeded in laying hands
on perhaps the grandest prize of all, the great Jesuit establishment
of the Collegio Romano; and, looking to the uses to which it is being
put by Signor Bonghi, it may, I think, be said that it could not have
been better bestowed. Under his auspices it is intended to assume, and
is indeed rapidly assuming, the functions of the still vaster pile of
building in Great Russell street, London, known to all the world as
the British Museum, as will be seen from the following statement of
the purposes it is intended to serve and of the various matters to be
housed in it.

On the ground-floor there is already established a "Museo
Scolastico-Pedagogico"--a museum of all the means and appurtenances
that are used, or have been used, in different countries for the ends
and purposes of instruction. This is the idea and the creation of
Signor Bonghi; and it will, I think, be admitted that it is a very
happy one and likely to be fruitful in good results. A visit to it is
more interesting than might perhaps at first sight be imagined. I may
mention that on asking the very competent and enlightened director of
the establishment what people he consi