of Catholic England.  The address was read by Cardinal Wiseman, expressing in temperate terms enough the sympathy of the meeting for the tribulations which had befallen his Holiness.  The bearing of the Pope, so his admirers state, was calm, dignified, and resolute.  As however, I have heard this statement made on every occasion of his appearance in public, I am disposed to think it was much what it usually is—­the bearing of a good-natured, not over-wise, and somewhat shaky old man.  In reply to the address, he stated that “if it was the will of God that chastisement should be inflicted upon his Church, he, as His vicar, however unworthy, must taste of the chalice;” and that, “as becomes all Christians, knowing that though we cannot penetrate the motives of God, yet that He in his wisdom permits nothing without an ulterior object, we may safely trust that this object must be good.”  All persons present then advanced and kissed the Pope’s hand, or foot, if the ardour of their devotion was not contented by kissing the hand alone.  When this presentation was over, the Pope requested the company to kneel, and then prayed in Italian for the spiritual welfare of England, calling her the land of the saints, and alluding to the famous Non Angli, sed angeli.  He exhorted all present “to look forward to the good time when justice and mercy should meet and embrace each other as brothers;” and finally, with faltering voice, and tears rolling down his cheeks, gave his apostolical benediction.  Of course, if you can shut your eyes to facts, all this is very pretty and sentimental.  If the Romans could be happy enough to possess the constitution of Thibet, and have a spiritual and a temporal Grand Llama, they could not have fixed on a more efficient candidate for the former post than the present Pope; but the crowds of French soldiers which lined the streets to coerce the chosen people, formed a strange comment on the value of pontifical piety.  It is too true that the better the Pope the worse the ruler.  Probably the thousands of Romans who thronged the Corso knew more about the blessings of the Papal sway than the few score strangers, who volunteered to pay the homage to the Sovereign of Rome which the Romans refuse to render.

To-day the demonstration was repeated on the Porta Pia; and the Vatican, indignant at its powerlessness to suppress these symptoms of disaffection, is anxious to stir up the crowd to some overt act of insurrection, which may justify or, at any rate, palliate the employment of violent measures.  So in order to incense the crowd, the public executioner was sent out in a cart guarded by gendarmes to excite some active expression of anger on the part of the mob.  It is hard for us to understand the feeling with which the Italians, and especially the Romans, regard the carnefice.  He is always a condemned murderer, whose life is spared on condition of his assuming the hated office, and, except on duty, he is never allowed to leave the quarter of St Angelo, where he dwells, as otherwise his life would be sacrificed to the indignation of the crowd, who regard his presence as a contamination.