I cannot well wind up my gossip on this subject better than by translating a passage from the programme of the Contemporaneo, which represents the hope of Rome at this moment. It is conducted by men of well-known talent.
"The Contemporaneo (Contemporary) is a journal of progress, but tempered, as the good and wise think best, in conformity with the will of our best of princes, and the wants and expectations of the public....
"Through discussion it desires to prepare minds to receive reforms so soon and far as they are favored by the law of opportunity.
"Every attempt which is made contrary to this social law must fail. It is vain to hope fruits from a tree out of season, and equally in vain to introduce the best measures into a country not prepared to receive them."
And so on. I intended to have translated in full the programme, but time fails, and the law of opportunity does not favor, as my "opportunity" leaves for London this afternoon. I have given enough to mark the purport of the whole. It will easily be seen that it was not from the platform assumed by the Contemporaneo that Lycurgus legislated, or Socrates taught,—that the Christian religion was propagated, or the Church, was reformed by Luther. The opportunity that the martyrs found here in the Colosseum, from whose blood grew up this great tree of Papacy, was not of the kind waited for by these moderate progressists. Nevertheless, they may be good schoolmasters for Italy, and are not to be disdained in these piping times of peace.
More anon, of old and new, from Tuscany.
LETTER XV.
Italy.—Fruits and Flowers on the Route from Florence to Rome.—The Plain of Umbria.—Assisi.—The Saints.—Tuition In Schools.—Pius IX.—The Etrurian Tomb.—Perugia and its Stores of Early Art.—Portraits of Raphael.—Florence.—The Grand Duke and his Policy.—The Liberty of the Press and its Influence.—The American Sculptors.—Greenough and his New Works.—Powers.—His Statue of Calhoun.—Review of his Endeavors.—The Festivals of St. John at Florence.—Bologna.—Female Professors in its University.—Matilda Tambroni and others.—Milan and her Female Mathematician.—The State of Woman in Italy.—Ravenna and Byron.—Venice.—The Adda.—Milan and its Neighborhood, and Manzoni.—Excitements.—National Affairs.
Milan, August 9, 1847.