The affair was not yet over. The civic guard, that darling creation of regenerate freedom, took up its muskets, planted themselves at the gates, and declared that no one, priest, bishop, or pope, should stir from Rome. A kind of rabble proclamation was next made, that "no ecclesiastic should hold any civil office." If this be persisted in, there is an end of "Our Sovereign Lord the Pope." He may possibly be allowed to say mass, hear confessions, and work miracles in the old monkish fashion. But his tiara must pass away, his sceptre will be a staff, and his toe will be kissed no more. The mob say that as they do not wish to take him by surprise, they have allowed him some days to settle the question of private life with himself. But the declaration of war is the sine quâ non, and if he refuses, there is to be a "provisional government."
"By six o'clock, on the 1st instant, no answer had been received." Such is the new punctuality of popular dealings with princes and popes; and such was the announcement of the mob leaders to all those political reformers, the loungers of Rome. But at last the old expedient of startled sovereignty has been adopted. The ministry, by intelligence on the 5th, had been suffered to retire, and their successors, more liberal than ever, were received with popular acclamation.
The senate of Rome, probably to soften this measure to the Papal feelings, presented Pius with a long address, which, however, contains a repetition of the demand for war at any price. It says, "The people do not expect you, a messenger of peace, to declare war. But they only desire that you should not prevent those to whom you have confided the direction of temporal affairs to undertake and conduct it." Thus the division is complete. The Pope is to be two distinct personages—the messenger of peace, and the maker of war; unless, in the latter instance, he is to be responsible for acts which he does not guide, and to acknowledge his ministers to be "viceroys over him." Of all the acts of sovereignty, the most inalienable is the making of peace and war. But the sovereign of Rome is to have nothing of the kind. He is to be a puppet in the hands of a Board. We may well believe the accounts which represent him as "in deep dejection" at these manifestations of popular dealings with princes and popes. If his "Holiness" is not expeditious in his decision to obey his Sansculotte statesmen, the conclusion will be as rapid as the conception.
In all this chapter of change, whatever may be the coolness of our respect for the Papacy, we feel for the Pope, as we should feel for any man intolerably insulted by a conspiracy of wretches pampered into gross arrogance by sudden power. His personal character is unimpeachable; and if his vanity has met with a sudden and bitter reproof, it is only the vanity of an Italian.
Even of the people of Italy we speak only with regret. If these pages contain contemptuous expressions, wrung from us by the truth of things, we are not the less ready to acknowledge the original merits of a people spoiled only by their institutions. We admit every instance which their panegyrists adduce of their natural ability, of their kindliness of disposition, of their ancient intrepidity in the field, and of their brilliancy in the arts. We impute all their waste of those gifts to the fiction which they call their religion. We lament over the hopelessness of Italian restoration while the nation sees the melting of St Januarius's blood as a work of heaven; expects the remission of sins from looking at the napkin of St Veronica; bows down to an image of the Virgin as the worker of miracles, and as an object of divine worship. While this lasts, the mind of Italy must remain in the darkness of that of its fathers, it may have wars, but it will have no advance in liberty; it may have revolutions, but it will have no national vigour; it may have a thousand depositions of sovereigns, but it will only be a change of masters, and every change only leaving it the more a slave. Italy can have but one charter—the Bible.
But now the world is in confusion. War in the north—war in the south—war gathering in the east of Europe. Russia, with 120,000 men, marching on Poland, to be followed by 300,000 more. France, with half a million of men in arms, waiting but the blast of the revolutionary trumpet to pour down on Italy. Can these things be by accident? Universal convulsion after a tranquillity of thirty years! And are these but the beginning of sorrows?
THE INCA AND HIS BRIDE.—A MEDLEY.
CHAPTER I.
ASTLEY'S.