ITALY must make her choice between the Pope and Garibaldi. Assuredly she cannot have both, and the grave question now is, Which does she prefer? There are many who think they see, in the changed feeling of Italians towards the Church, the dawn of a more enlightened view of Christianity, and they are fond of ascribing this change in great part to the efforts of those who have introduced into Italy the teachings of the Reformed religion. The tolerance which a wise and liberal Government has practised, has certainly not only permitted the free circulation of the Scriptures, but given to the Waldensian and other sects of the Reformed Church facilities for conversion, of which they have availed themselves with more or less of success. Although in certain centres, Genoa and Florence notably, societies exist where Bible-reading and Scriptural inquiry have made marked progress, I am far from believing that this spirit has penetrated into the heart of the nation, or that the opposition to Romanism has any other basis than the political repugnance men feel to a system whose whole machinery is the denial of all freedom, and the negation of human progress and advancement. The enemies of the Pope in Italy are not men who dispute the doctrines of the Church; for they are men who hold so lightly all religious teachings, that they laugh to scorn the allegation that they could be influenced by an encyclical, or deem an oecumenical council of more moment than a teaparty.

It is Popery, as a power in the State, that they combat,-Popery, with its staff of cardinals and legates, and its army of priests and friars; Popery that can appeal to the

ignorance of a nation by arguments enlightenment has never learned how to meet; Popery that can resist the law without an open breach of legality, and make legislation inoperative by mere impassiveness; and, lastly, Popery that can control all attempts of the State for education, and subordinate the teaching of the Government to a terrorism the most degrading and debasing. It is not the spiritual infallibility of the Pope, or the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, that makes men rebels to the Church in Italy, though Exeter Hall would fain believe so. It is the fact that the Priest rules the family, dictates its mode of action, decides the destiny of the children, and denounces, under heavier penalties than human laws impose, all opposition to his edicts.

When men found that the mechanism of representative government could not work alongside of the machinery of a Church that insinuated itself into the entire social framework of a nation, they became the enemies of Rome. If the Church had kept to her dogmas, her mock miracles, her canonisations, and her grand festivals, regenerated Italy would never have quarrelled with her. It was when they met on the same roadthat of popular direction-that they jostled, and it was then they fell out.

The first sense of freedom is enough to suggest resistance to priestcraft; so was it in Italy, so is it at the hour I write in Austria. Let not worthy people in England, then, who speculate on the spread of Scriptural knowledge in Italy as the mainspring of the resistance to Rome, deceive themselves. The resistance is there unquestionably, but its origin is wholly and solely political.

There are maladies, however, for which the only remedies are to the full as dangerous as the disease; and many are of opinion that to treat Popery by Garibaldini is one of these-for the question is, When you have got rid of the Pope, how will you get rid of Garibaldi The priest is the sworn enemy of all liberty and all progress, but the patriot is just as great a foe to all order and good government.

Can a country exist where a citizen can set himself above the law and the legislature? Is government possible where an individual, by the sole force of his popularity, can override the counsels of the State and the decrees of the Parliament, and make peace or declare war at his own humour?

Is a nation governable where one man, whose services have made him the favourite of a whole people, aspires to understand its interests, to feel its instincts, and to guide its ambitions, not only independent of, but totally in opposition to, the counsels of the responsible advisers of the Crown?

The Pope may be impracticable, but is not Garibaldi impossible? So say many; and how far are they right? It is certain that this is the state of things now existing in Italy, where there is a King, and a Cabinet, and a Parliament, but no Government.

Nations cannot, any more than individuals, profit by their own "wrong." The countenance and encouragement first given to Garibaldi, and the eagerness of Italian statesmen to avail themselves of his undisciplined valour and his ir responsible boldness, have at length recoiled on the nation. They made him, and they have now to learn that they cannot unmake him. He was a man neither to be cajoled nor intimidated. No blandishments in high places, no glittering honours, could influence one who was never ashamed of friends the very humblest in condition, and who constitutionally was inclined to believe

that probity and honour only dwelt in low places.

It was indeed possible for the Ministry to have accepted this last venture of Garibaldi as the outburst of a national enthusiasm. They have since avowed that the September Convention imposed conditions beyond their power to fulfil. They might, then, have acted up to their convictions, and as, once before, they followed the great leader to Capua, they might have gone after him to the Vatican. The great battle which overthrew the Neapolitan dynasty was won by regal troops, not by Garibaldini; and in the great issue with the Pope, the Italian army would have completed the work so effectually, had they marched at once on Garibaldi's first advance, that resistance would have been impossible, and French intervention too late.

In this way there would, in all probability, have been no bloodshed. The Papal forces could, without dishonour, have retired before the overwhelming masses of their opponents; and Rome once occupied, the Emperor would, it may be supposed, have been satisfied to make terms for the Papacy, and not have threatened a war with Italy. Prompt action alone by the Italian Government could have borne out the assertion that Garibaldi was but the exponent of the national will. To delay was to expose the allegation to a test, and a test which perhaps it could not satisfy.

To delay, too, was actually to compel the French Emperor to come in. There was no fait accompli, to undo which might be dangerous, or at any rate unpopular. There was not one of those unquestionable manifestations of a national will which the great patron of oppressed peoples would have been bound for very consistency's sake to maintain. The Garibaldian raid could only have been legalised by its adoption by the King's Government. To hesitate

was to peril the expedition and to peril the Crown. It is true that Louis Napoleon, making capital out of Italian weakness, can afford to spare the dynasty; but, I would ask, how is Victor Emmanuel better off to-day than that unlucky King of Saxony, who is only a Prussian Prefect in plain clothes? Is his vassalage less complete, or his humiliation less notorious?

Has the great work of Cavour only ended in a change of masters? And is there less indignity in being bullied by France than garrisoned by Austria? Garibaldi may be, and probably is, the great obstacle to the good government of Italy; but as Italians have made him what he is, and profited by what he has done, was there any reason to denounce to-day what was called patriotism a few years back? Having once accepted Garibaldi as an agent, it was as pusillanimous as it was weak in policy to disavow him.

It is not easy to bring Italians to anything approaching to unanimity, but on this occasion they certainly were so. Some were heart and soul with Garibaldi; many were against the Pope and his temporal power; many desired to finish, once for all, with a great source of internal trouble, and a great excuse for external interference; but all all were strong in their spirit to resist French domination and dictation, and in their resolution to tell the French Emperor that men may be grateful, but need not be servile. There was, then, this one chance for Italy, and she did not take it. That France would have sulked, written a severe and cutting despatch, and withdrawn her Minister from Florence, is possible enough; but all these are not intervention, and I sincerely believe she would have gone no farther. The thief was so long in breaking the lock, and showed such palpable fear of consequences, that the policeman could not do other than arrest him.

There is no greater tact in statesmanship than knowing the things that may be done if no permission be asked, but which are sure to be vigorously resisted if subjected to time and discussion. It was in all probability the very last wish of the Emperor that Victor Emmanuel should have obliged him to intervene. There are too strong signs of adverse public opinion in France, not to speak of the clouds that are gathering along the Rhine, to make such an expedition agreeable or well timed. That M. Bismarck regarded the return of the French to Italy as a fatal mistake in policy, might of itself have alarmed Louis Napoleon.

The Italian policy, however, scarcely left a choice open. Capturing Garibaldi to-day, suffering him to escape to-morrow, and the day after permitting him to address a mob from the balcony of a hotel in Florence, while in the evening a special train conveyed him to the Roman frontier,-who can explain this? Who can understand it? It is too absurd for complicity-too weak for treachery. Some aver that the army could not be trusted to act against Garibaldi; and, so far as the new levies and the young soldiers are concerned, there may be some truth in this. Others declare that there is no doubt it was the King himself who hesitated and faltered; for the heroic soldier is an intense Papist, and would rather meet the wildest shock of charging squadrons than incur the rebukeful anger of the Pope.

But the nation which looks on and expects to be guided and governed, what does it say to all this change of purpose? to the brave words of Rattazzi one day, and to the apologetic proclamation of the King on the next? to three changes of Ministry within eight days, each incoming Cabinet more helpless and hopeless than its predecessor ?

Men ask, Is this the nationality, is this the independence, for which we have fought and paid? It is

out of all this doubt and uncertainty people are turning to those few brave fellows who, under the walls of Rome, seem to assert the nation which ministers and statesmen despair of.

I have no doubt in my own mind it is a mistake a great political blunder, as well as a social error - to wish to dispossess the Pope. I will not go over the reasons, which I have once before advanced, for this conviction; but I will add here, that so far from desiring extension of territory, it had been well for Italy she had never annexed Naples or Sicily. South Italy was neither prepared for, nor worthy of, the institutions which the North possessed; and men might have been warned, by the facility with which a dynasty was overthrown in such a country, how thin and light was the soil in which the seed of any government was to be cast. In this one instance, Bismarck has shown himself wiser than Cavour. When the South seeks annexation, it will be time enough, says the wily Prussian, to see if she is worthy of admission.

And now, what is to be the fate of Italy A few days-a few hours, perhaps may decide much for her immediate fortune; but for her future, who is to prophesy?

When I had written and despatched the foregoing, the last act of the Roman drama had not begun. Since that, however, the French have landed in Italy, the Garibaldini have been cut to pieces at Mentana, and their gallant old leader is once more a prisoner at Varignano.

It is rare at the end of a game to find that every player has been a loser, and yet such is the case here. The Pope is a loser, in so far that he has challenged the public opinion of Europe, and the verdict has been given against him.

Garibaldi is a loser, for the prestige of invincibility is gone, and

men are at last agreed that undisciplined valour is no match for organisation and a breech-loading rifle.

Louis Napoleon is a loser, for he has surrendered the place it was his pretension to hold in the van of all human progress and advancement; and, to give a few more years to a system he has himself condemned, he has outraged the sentiments of France, and forfeited the love and gratitude of Italy.

Italy has lost most of all. Pretexting that the patriotism of the nation was a current too strong to oppose, she denounces the intervention that would dare to encounter it; and then, when she discovers that her menaces are unminded and her threats despised, she ranges herself alongside of her adversaries to coerce her own.

To be sure it took three changes of Ministry to arrive at this deplorable conclusion. What Rattazzi would have said, what Cialdini would have done, Heaven knows; but we can all see what M. Menabrea has made of the situation. If he meant a joint occupation, why has he retired the Italian forces from the Papal frontier? If he meant unqualified submission to France, why is he calling out fresh levies, and raising the army to a war standard?

Can Italy imagine that Louis Napoleon is moved by any menace she can utter now? Who in all Europe knows better than the French Emperor that Italy has neither an army nor a fleet? It is in France, however-in Paris, on his own Boulevards-the Emperor will learn how unpopular his policy is; and in the police reports of each morning he will read that the dread of priestly tyranny is stronger with Frenchmen than all fear of a despotic government; and that, if they must be down-trodden, they would rather be crushed by the heavy boot of the cuirassier, than pressed by the silken slipper of the cardinal.

Meanwhile there is joy at Berlin, and pleasant gratulations are exchanged "unter die Linden." The French Emperor has done for M. Bismarck what all his craft and skill-and they are not meancould never have accomplished. He has outraged the whole Liberal sentiment of Europe, and surrendered to Prussia the vantageground for which France paid by two bloody campaigns and some milliards of debt; and the only

recompense for all this is, the sneers of the Legitimists and the hate of Italy.

Some aver that Louis Napoleon is only playing his old game over again-seizing something that is not his own, and exchanging it for something else with "a title;" and just as he disposed of Tuscany, Modena, and Parma, for Nice and Savoy, he will now cede Rome and the Pope's dominions for the island of Sardinia.

I remember in my old days of Trinity-very happy days on the whole, but not of unmixed happiness-that there were a number of us who, though we took no prizes, no medals, no scholarships of any kind, were fully convinced that we were the cleverest fellows of the day, and that nothing short of that academic ophthalmia which afflicts "dons" and senior lecturers to a fearful extent, prevented our being regarded as the shining lights of the university.

From having frequently discussed this theme together, from having condoled with each other over our bitter misfortune, and bewailed the injustice of a world for which we found no more plausible excuse than that it knew no better, we at length resolved ourselves into a community, which, for the sake of organisation, became a club, under the name of "The Society for Mutual Appreciation." I am proud to say I was the first president, and sported the letters "P.S.M.A." on my card with no small vainglori

ousness.

Our great principle was this, that as each man who was found worthy of belonging to the Society must have a profound consciousness of some high personal desert, the assertion of which in the world at large might expose him to a charge of egotism, it would be better that his peculiar merits should be put

WARRANTED."

forward by another who could describe them in more glowing terms and exalt them in a more conspicuous manner than their actual owner, and thus the work of appreciation being conducted on mutual principles, the most lavish praise, the most fulsome adulation, became possible without any disparaging trait of egotism whatever.

Experience has shown us that society will endure from A the most extravagant amount of admiration for B, while it would turn away disgusted if B only said one-half as much about himself. Nor was this all; for we saw that there were innumerable merits of which the individual owner might think lightly, but which, to the appreciative eyes of another, became great and grand qualities.

In looking over life, which of us has not perceived how certain families have traded on this great principle, and seen what efficient aid has been given to the colonel by his brother the lawyer, and how a word against the admiral has called forth the whole family like a phalanx, till actually it became a dangerous thing to touch certain people at all, and even the press, the chartered libertine of public opinion, measured its censure by drop doses when treating of men thus banded together?

I find it very hard not to grow personal here, and instance, by a