My private fortunes are dark and tangled; my strength to govern them (perhaps that I am enervated by this climate) much diminished.  I have thrown myself on God, and perhaps he will make my temporal state very tragical.  I am more of a child than ever, and hate suffering more than ever, but suppose I shall live with it, if it must come.

I did not get your letter, about having the rosary blessed for ——­, before I left Rome, and now, I suppose, she would not wish it, as none can now attach any value to the blessing of Pius IX.  Those who loved him can no longer defend him.  It has become obvious, that those first acts of his in the papacy were merely the result of a kindly, good-natured temperament; that he had not thought to understand their bearing, nor force to abide by it.  He seems quite destitute of moral courage.  He is not resolute either on the wrong or right side.  First, he abandoned the liberal party; then, yielding to the will of the people, and uniting, in appearance, with a liberal ministry, he let the cardinals betray it, and defeat the hopes of Italy.  He cried peace, peace! but had not a word of blame for the sanguinary acts of the King of Naples, a word of sympathy for the victims of Lombardy.  Seizing the moment of dejection in the nation, he put in this retrograde ministry; sanctioned their acts, daily more impudent:  let them neutralize the constitution he himself had given; and when the people slew his minister, and assaulted him in his own palace, he yielded anew; he dared not die, or even run the slight risk,—­for only by accident could he have perished.  His person as a Pope is still respected, though his character as a man is despised.  All the people compare him with Pius VII. saying to the French, “Slay me if you will; I cannot yield,” and feel the difference.

I was on Monte Cavallo yesterday.  The common people were staring at the broken windows and burnt door of the palace where they have so often gone to receive a blessing, the children playing, “Sedia Papale.  Morte ai Cardinali, e morte al Papa!”

The men of straw are going down in Italy everywhere; the real men rising into power.  Montanelli, Guerazzi, Mazzini, are real men; their influence is of character.  Had we only been born a little later!  Mazzini has returned from his seventeen years’ exile, “to see what he foresaw.”  He has a mind far in advance of his times, and yet Mazzini sees not all.

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Rome, May 7, 1848.—­Good and loving hearts will be unprepared, and for a time must suffer much from the final dereliction of Pius IX. to the cause of freedom.  After the revolution opened in Lombardy, the troops of the line were sent thither; the volunteers rushed to accompany them, the priests preached the war as a crusade, the Pope blessed the banners.  The report that the Austrians had taken and hung as a brigand one of the Roman Civic Guard,—­a well-known artist engaged in the war of Lombardy,—­roused