I missed him much at the Fair of St. Eustachio.  This, like the Carnival, was last year entirely spoiled by constant rain.  I never saw it at all before.  It comes in the first days, or rather nights, of January.  All the quarter of St. Eustachio is turned into one toy-shop; the stalls are set out in the street and brightly lighted, up.  These are full of cheap toys,—­prices varying from half a cent up to twenty cents.  The dolls, which are dressed as husband and wife, or sometimes grouped in families, are the most grotesque rag-babies that can be imagined.  Among the toys are great quantities of whistles, tin trumpets, and little tambourines; of these every man, woman, and child has bought one, and is using it to make a noise.  This extempore concert begins about ten o’clock, and lasts till midnight; the delight of the numerous children that form part of the orchestra, the good-humored familiarity without the least touch of rudeness in the crowd, the lively effect of the light upon the toys, and the jumping, shouting figures that, exhibit them, make this the pleasantest Saturnalia.  Had you only been there, E., to guide me by the hand, blowing the trumpet for both, and spying out a hundred queer things in nooks that entirely escape me!

The Roman still plays amid his serious affairs, and very serious have they been this past winter.  The Roman legions went out singing and dancing to fight in Lombardy, and they fought no less bravely for that.

When I wrote last, the Pope had fled, guided, he says, “by the hand of Providence,”—­Italy deems by the hand of Austria,—­to Gaeta.  He had already soiled his white robes, and defamed himself for ever, by heaping benedictions on the king of Naples and the bands of mercenaries whom he employs to murder his subjects on the least sign of restlessness in their most painful position.  Most cowardly had been the conduct of his making promises he never meant to keep, stealing away by night in the coach of a foreign diplomatist, protesting that what he had done was null because he had acted under fear,—­as if such a protest could avail to one who boasts himself representative of Christ and his Apostles, guardian of the legacy of the martyrs!  He selected a band of most incapable men to face the danger he had feared for himself; most of these followed his example and fled.  Rome sought an interview with him, to see if reconciliation were possible; he refused to receive her messengers.  His wicked advisers calculated upon great confusion and distress as inevitable on the occasion; but, for once, the hope of the bad heart was doomed to immediate disappointment.  Rome coolly said, “If you desert me,—­if you will not hear me,—­I must act for myself.”  She threw herself into the arms of a few men who had courage and calmness for this crisis; they bade her think upon what was to be done, meanwhile avoiding every excess that could give a color to calumny and revenge.  The people, with admirable good sense, comprehended and followed up this advice.  Never was Rome so truly tranquil, so nearly free from gross ill, as this winter.  A few words of brotherly admonition have been more powerful than all the spies, dungeons, and scaffolds of Gregory.