to Civita Vecchia.  The negotiations with Sardinia and Tuscany for an Italian league were advanced nearly to completion.  Chairs of political economy and commercial law were founded in the universities at Rome and Bologna.  Toward the close of October the mob rose in Rome, on occasion of a squabble between a Jew and a Catholic, and threatened to sack the Ghetto and maltreat its inhabitants.  Rossi hurried the Civic Guard and the carbineers to the spot, allayed the tumult, arrested and imprisoned some of its ringleaders, and published an energetic proclamation to warn the turbulent that the laws would be enforced.

“All these proceedings excited the anger of Rossi’s enemies, the journalists, the captains of the people, and the Roman clubs.”  There was no opprobrium that was not heaped upon him, no charge that was not levelled at the Government.  But these declamations seemed to have little effect on the body of the people.  On the morning of November 15th, when the Legislature was to commence its session, though knots of persons were seen talking in the streets with excited countenances, there was no outbreak or popular tumult.  Rossi had received many anonymous letters in which his life was threatened, but he scorned to take any notice of them.  This morning one came which directly affirmed that he would be assassinated in the course of the day; and he threw it into the fire.  The regulation of the police, now that the day of the session had arrived, belonged to the President of the Council of Deputies; and Rossi, punctilious in the observance of the constitution, refused to give them any orders.

Several of his friends came and remonstrated with him against such an exposure of his life.  “To all this he answered that he had taken the measures which he thought suitable for keeping the seditious in order, and that he could not, on account of risk that he might personally run, forego repairing to the Council according to his duty; that perhaps these were idle menaces; but if anyone thirsted for his blood, he would have the means of shedding it elsewhere on some other day, even if, on that day, he should lose his opportunity.  He would therefore go.”  He was elated by the confidence which the Pope had in him, and expected both trust and aid from the Parliament, to which he was so soon to explain his ideas and intentions.

“When the ordinary hour of the parliamentary sitting, which was about noon, arrived, the people began to gather in the square of the Cancellaria, and by degrees in the courtyard and then in the public galleries of the hall.  Soon these were all full.  A battalion of the Civic Guard was drawn up in the square; in the court and hall there was no guard greater than ordinary.  There were, however, not a few individuals, armed with their daggers, in the dress of the volunteers returned from Vicenza, and wearing the medals with which the municipality of Rome had decorated them.  They stood together and formed