want of success, because the
task he had set before him was the quadrature of the circle in
politics.

The weight of a less qualified responsibility rests upon him for his
subsequent actions. On the 3rd of December Parliament voted a proposal
to send a deputation to the Pope, praying him to return to his States.
To give the deputation greater authority, the Municipality of Rome
proposed that the Syndic, the octogenarian Prince Corsini, should
accompany it. It also comprised two ecclesiastics, and thus
constituted, it left Rome for Gaeta on the 5th of December. On the
borders of the Neapolitan kingdom its passage was barred by the
police, and it was obliged to retrace its steps to Terracina. Here the
deputation drew up a letter to Cardinal Antonelli (no longer the
patriotic minister of the spring), in which an audience with the
Sovereign Pontiff was respectfully requested. The answer came that the
Pope would not receive the deputation. It was an answer that he was at
liberty to make, but it should have meant abdication. If, called back
by the will of the Parliament of his own making, the Sovereign deigned
not even to receive the bearers of the invitation, in what way did he
contemplate resuming the throne? It was only too easy to guess. The
Head of Christendom had become a convert of King Ferdinand of Naples,
otherwise Bomba. By a path strewn with the sinister flowers of war did
Pius IX. meditate returning to his subjects--by that path and no
other.

The Galetti-Sterbini ministry, appointed by the Pope under popular
pressure a few days before his departure, remained in charge of
affairs, somewhat strengthened by the adhesion of Terenzio Mamiani as
Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mamiani at first declined to form part of
the ministry, but joined it afterwards with self-sacrificing
patriotism, in the hope of saving things from going to complete rack
and ruin during the interregnum caused by the withdrawal of the Head
of the State. He only retired from the ungrateful office when he saw
the imminence of a radical change in the form of government, which was
not desired by him any more than it had been by Rossi.

The mass of the population of the Roman States had desired such a
change ever since the days of Gregory; the temporary enthusiasm for
Pius, if it arrested the flow of the stream, did not prevent the
waters from accumulating beyond the dyke. One day the dyke would
burst, and the waters sweep all before them.

A Con