How it pleases me here to think of the Abolitionists!  I could never endure to be with them at home, they were so tedious, often so narrow, always so rabid and exaggerated in their tone.  But, after all, they had a high motive, something eternal in their desire and life; and if it was not the only thing worth thinking of, it was really something worth living and dying for, to free a great nation from such a terrible blot, such a threatening plague.  God strengthen them, and make them wise to achieve their purpose!

I please myself, too, with remembering some ardent souls among the American youth, who I trust will yet expand, and help to give soul to the huge, over-fed, too hastily grown-up body.  May they be constant!  “Were man but constant, he were perfect,” it has been said; and it is true that he who could be constant to those moments in which he has been truly human, not brutal, not mechanical, is on the sure path to his perfection, and to effectual service of the universe.

It is to the youth that hope addresses itself; to those who yet burn with aspiration, who are not hardened in their sins.  But I dare not expect too much of them.  I am not very old; yet of those who, in life’s morning, I saw touched by the light of a high hope, many have seceded.  Some have become voluptuaries; some, mere family men, who think it quite life enough to win bread for half a dozen people, and treat them, decently; others are lost through indolence and vacillation.  Yet some remain constant;

  “I have witnessed many a shipwreck,
  Yet still beat noble hearts.”

I have found many among the youth of England, of France, of Italy, also, full of high desire; but will they have courage and purity to fight the battle through in the sacred, the immortal band?  Of some of them I believe it, and await the proof.  If a few succeed amid the trial, we have not lived and loved in vain.

To these, the heart and hope of my country, a happy new year!  I do not know what I have written; I have merely yielded to my feelings in thinking of America; but something of true love must be in these lines.  Receive them kindly, my friends; it is, of itself, some merit for printed words to be sincere.

LETTER XIX.

THE CLIMATE OF ITALY.—­REVIEW OF FIRST IMPRESSIONS.—­ROME IN ITS
VARIOUS ASPECTS.—­THE POPE.—­CEMETERY OF SANTO SPIRITO.—­CEREMONIES AT
THE CHAPELS.—­THE WOMEN OF ITALY.—­FESTIVAL OF ST. CARLO BORROMEO.—­AN
INCIDENT IN THE CHAPEL.—­ENGLISH RESIDENTS IN THE SEVEN-HILLED
CITY.—­MRS. TROLLOPE A RESIDENT OF FLORENCE.—­THE POPE AS HE
COMMUNICATES WITH HIS PEOPLE.—­THE POSITION OF AFFAIRS.—­LESSER
POTENTATES.—­THE INAUGURATION OF THE NEW COUNCIL.—­THE CEREMONIES
THERETO APPERTAINING.—­THE AMERICAN FLAG IN ROME.—­A BALL.—­A FEAST,
AND ITS REVERSE.—­THE FUNERAL OF A COUNCILLOR.

Rome, December 17, 1847.