Pope and Cardinals have great hopes from America; the giant influence there is kept up with the greatest care; the number of Catholic writers in the United States, too, carefully counted.  Had our republican government acknowledged this republican government, the Papal Camarilla would have respected us more, but not loved us less; for have we not the loaves and fishes to give, as well as the precious souls to be saved?  Ah! here, indeed, America might go straightforward with all needful impunity.  Bishop Hughes himself need not be anxious.  That first, best occasion has passed, and the unrecognized, unrecognizing Envoy has given offence, and not comfort, by a presence that seemed constantly to say, I do not think you can sustain yourselves.  It has wounded both the heart and the pride of Rome.  Some of the lowest people have asked me, “Is it not true that your country had a war to become free?” “Yes.”  “Then why do they not feel for us?”

Yet even now it is not too late.  If America would only hail triumphant, though she could not sustain injured Rome, that would be something.  “Can you suppose Rome will triumph,” you say, “without money, and against so potent a league of foes?” I am not sure, but I hope, for I believe something in the heart of a people when fairly awakened.  I have also a lurking confidence in what our fathers spoke of so constantly, a providential order of things, by which brute force and selfish enterprise are sometimes set at naught by aid which seems to descend from a higher sphere.  Even old pagans believed in that, you know; and I was born in America, Christianized by the Puritans,—­America, freed by eight years’ patient suffering, poverty, and struggle,—­America, so cheered in dark days by one spark of sympathy from a foreign shore,—­America, first “recognized” by Lafayette.  I saw him when traversing our country, then great, rich, and free.  Millions of men who owed in part their happiness to what, no doubt, was once sneered at as romantic sympathy, threw garlands in his path.  It is natural that I should have some faith.

Send, dear America! to thy ambassadors a talisman precious beyond all that boasted gold of California.  Let it loose his tongue to cry, “Long live the Republic, and may God bless the cause of the people, the brotherhood of nations and of men,—­equality of rights for all.” Viva America!

Hail to my country!  May she live a free, a glorious, a loving life, and not perish, like the old dominions, from, the leprosy of selfishness.

Evening.

I am alone in the ghostly silence of a great house, not long since full of gay faces and echoing with gay voices, now deserted by every one but me,—­for almost all foreigners are gone now, driven by force either of the summer heats or the foe.  I hear all the Spaniards are going now,—­that twenty-one have taken passports to-day; why that is, I do not know.

I shall not go till the last moment; my only fear is of France.  I cannot think in any case there would be found men willing to damn themselves to latest posterity by bombarding Rome.  Other cities they may treat thus, careless of destroying the innocent and helpless, the babe and old grandsire who cannot war against them.  But Rome, precious inheritance of mankind,—­will they run the risk of marring her shrined treasures?  Would they dare do it?