LETTER XVII.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME IN THE SPRING.—­THE POPE.—­ROME AS
A CAPITAL.—­TUSCANY.—­THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS THERE JUST
ESTABLISHED.—­THE ENLIGHTENED MINDS AND AVAILABLE INSTRUCTORS OF
TUSCANY.—­ITALIAN ESTIMATION OF PIUS IX., AND THE INFLUENCE,
PRESENT AND FUTURE, OF HIS LABORS.—­FOREIGN INTRUSION THE CURSE OF
ITALY.—­IRRUPTION OF THE AUSTRIANS INTO ITALY, AND ITS EFFECTS.—­LOUIS
PHILIPPE’S APOSTASY TURNED TO THE ADVANTAGE OF FREEDOM.—­THE GREAT
FETE AT FLORENCE IN HONOR OF THE GRANT OF A NATIONAL GUARD.—­THE
AMERICAN SCULPTORS, GREENOUGH, CRAWFORD, AND THEIR PARTICIPATION IN
THE FETE.—­AMERICANS GENERALLY IN ITALY.—­HYMNS IN FLORENCE IN HONOR
OF PIUS IX.—­HAPPY AUGURY TO BE DRAWN FROM THE WISE DOCILITY OF THE
PEOPLE.—­AN EXPRESSION OF SYMPATHY FROM AMERICA TOWARD ITALY EARNESTLY
HOPED FOR.

Rome, October 18, 1847.

In the spring, when I came to Rome, the people were in the intoxication of joy at the first serious measures of reform taken by the Pope.  I saw with pleasure their childlike joy and trust.  With equal pleasure I saw the Pope, who has not in his expression the signs of intellectual greatness so much as of nobleness and tenderness of heart, of large and liberal sympathies.  Heart had spoken to heart between the prince and the people; it was beautiful to see the immediate good influence exerted by human feeling and generous designs, on the part of a ruler.  He had wished to be a father, and the Italians, with that readiness of genius that characterizes them, entered at once into the relation; they, the Roman people, stigmatized by prejudice as so crafty and ferocious, showed themselves children, eager to learn, quick to obey, happy to confide.

Still doubts were always present whether all this joy was not premature.  The task undertaken by the Pope seemed to present insuperable difficulties.  It is never easy to put new wine into old bottles, and our age is one where all things tend to a great crisis; not merely to revolution, but to radical reform.  From the people themselves the help must come, and not from princes; in the new state of things, there will be none but natural princes, great men.  From the aspirations of the general heart, from the teachings of conscience in individuals, and not from an old ivy-covered church long since undermined, corroded by time and gnawed by vermin, the help must come.  Rome, to resume her glory, must cease to be an ecclesiastical capital; must renounce all this gorgeous mummery, whose poetry, whose picture, charms no one more than myself, but whose meaning is all of the past, and finds no echo in the future.  Although I sympathized warmly with the warm love of the people, the adulation of leading writers, who were so willing to take all from the hand of the prince, of the Church, as a gift and a bounty, instead of implying steadily that it was the right of the people, was very repulsive to me.  The moderate party, like all who, in a transition state, manage affairs with a constant eye to prudence, lacks dignity always in its expositions; it is disagreeable and depressing to read them.