But ravens now-a-days are not the true prophetic birds.  The Roman eagle recommences her flight, and it is from its direction only that the high-priest may draw his augury.  The people are certainly as ignorant as centuries of the worst government, the neglect of popular education, the enslavement of speech and the press, could make them; yet they have an instinct to recognize measures that are good for them.  A few weeks’ schooling at some popular meetings, the clubs, the conversations of the National Guards in their quarters or on patrol, were sufficient to concert measures so well, that the people voted in larger proportion than at contested elections in our country, and made a very good choice.

The opening of the Constitutional Assembly gave occasion for a fine procession.  All the troops in Rome defiled from the Campidoglio; among them many bear the marks of suffering from the Lombard war.  The banners of Sicily, Venice, and Bologna waved proudly; that of Naples was veiled with crape.  I was in a balcony in the Piazza di Venezia; the Palazzo di Venezia, that sternest feudal pile, so long the head-quarters of Austrian machinations, seemed to frown, as the bands each in passing struck up the Marseillaise.  The nephew of Napoleon and Garibaldi, the hero of Montevideo, walked together, as deputies.  The deputies, a grave band, mostly advocates or other professional men, walked without other badge of distinction than the tricolored scarf.  I remembered the entrance of the deputies to the Council only fourteen months ago, in the magnificent carriages lent by the princes for the occasion; they too were mostly nobles, and their liveried attendants followed, carrying their scutcheons.  Princes and councillors have both fled or sunk into nothingness; in those councillors was no counsel.  Will it be found in the present?  Let us hope so!  What we see to-day has much more the air of reality than all that parade of scutcheons, or the pomp of dress and retinue with which the Ecclesiastical Court was wont to amuse the people.

A few days after followed the proclamation of a Republic.  An immense crowd of people surrounded the Palazzo della Cancelleria, within whose court-yard Rossi fell, while the debate was going on within.  At one o’clock in the morning of the 9th of February, a Republic was resolved upon, and the crowd rushed away to ring all the bells.

Early next morning I rose and went forth to observe the Republic.  Over the Quirinal I went, through the Forum, to the Capitol.  There was nothing to be seen except the magnificent calm emperor, the tamers of horses, the fountain, the trophies, the lions, as usual; among the marbles, for living figures, a few dirty, bold women, and Murillo boys in the sun just as usual.  I passed into the Corso; there were men in the liberty cap,—­of course the lowest and vilest had been the first to assume it; all the horrible beggars persecuting as impudently as usual.  I met some English; all their comfort was, “It would not last a month.”  “They hoped to see all these fellows shot yet.”  The English clergyman, more mild and legal, only hopes to see them (i.e. the ministry, deputies, &c.) hung.