though perceptible enough to a Roman, appeared to a stranger but a step above absolute stagnation.  I never could get over my astonishment at our utter ignorance of what went on around and amongst us.  About the state of affairs in our two neighbouring countries, whether in free Tuscany or in despotic Naples, we were entirely in the dark.  What little news we got was derived from chance reports of stray travellers, or from the French and English newspapers.  The Giornale di Roma gave us now and then a damnatory paragraph about the Tuscan Government, from which, out of a mass of vituperation, we could pick up an odd fact or so; but during the first four months of this year, throughout which period I perused the Giornale pretty carefully, I do not remember to have seen a single allusion, good, bad or indifferent, to the kingdom of Naples.  The Tuscan papers were naturally enough forbidden, as are almost all the journals of the free Italian states, and could only be obtained by private hands.  The Neapolitan Gazette, the Monitore del Regno delle Due Sicilie, was never seen by any chance, though I cannot suppose its circulation was directly interdicted.  The communication between Rome and Naples was, and is, scanty in the extreme.  During the last ten years, about ten miles of the Pio-Centrale Railroad, the Neapolitan line, have been opened.  At present beyond Albano the works are entirely at a stand-still, and there are still some thirty miles of line, between Rome and the frontier, of which hardly a sod has been turned.  The Civita Vecchia line has only been completed in consequence of the pressure of the French authorities, and the Ancona-Florence line is still in statu quo.  Three times a week there are diligences between Rome and Naples.  The local steam-boats, which used to run along the coast from Porto d’Anzio to the Neapolitan capital have been given up, and in fact there is no ready means of transit, save by the foreign steamers, which touch at Civita Vecchia.  Whether purposely or not, everything has been done to check free communication between the Papal and Neapolitan States, and in this respect the Government has been eminently successful.  The two countries are totally distinct.  A Neapolitan is a forestiere in Rome, and vice versa.  The divide et impera has been the motto of all the petty Italian despots and of the Papacy in particular, and hitherto has proved successful.  Even now, as far as I could see and learn, the desire for Italian unity does not penetrate very low down.  It is the desire, I freely grant, of all the best and wisest Italians, but scarcely, I suspect, the wish of the Italian people.  In truth, Italy at this moment is very much what Great Britain would be, if Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the States of the Saxon Heptarchy had remained to this day separate petty kingdoms, ruled by governments who fostered and developed every local and sectional jealousy.  The broad fact, that for some weeks at Rome we were in utter ignorance whether there had been a revolution or not in the capital of the frontier kingdom, not thirty miles away, and should have been quite surprised if we had learnt anything about the matter, is a sufficient commentary on our state of isolation.