Suppose, for the sake of argument, there was an English newspaper at Rome.  Let us consider what would be its summary of contents, this day on which I write.  Putting aside foreign topics altogether, what might one naturally suppose would be the Roman news?  There is the revolution in the Romagna; if private reports are not altogether false, there have been disturbances in the Marches; there is the question of the Congress, the rumoured departure of the French troops, the state of the adjoining kingdoms, the movements of the Pontifical army, and the promised Papal reforms.  Add to all this, there is the recent mysterious attempt at murder in the Minerva hotel, about which all kinds of strange rumours are in circulation.  Suppose too, which heaven forbid, that I was a Roman citizen, and had no means of catching sight of foreign newspapers, which is extremely probable, or understood no foreign language, which is more probable still; what in this case should I learn from my sole source of information, my Giornale di Roma, about my own city and my own country, on this 19th of January, in the year of grace 1860?

The first fact brought before my eager gaze on taking up the paper, would be that yesterday was the feast of St Peter’s chair.  Solemn mass was, I learn, performed in the cathedral, in the presence of “our Lord’s Holiness,” and a Latin oration pronounced in honour of the Sacred Chair.  After the ceremony was over, it seems that the Senator of Rome, Marquis Mattei, presented an address to the Pope, with a copy of which I am kindly favoured.  The Senator, in his own name and in that of his colleagues in the magistracy, declares, that “if at all times devotion to the Pontiff and loyalty to the Sovereign was the intense desire of his heart, it is more ardent to-day than ever, since he only re-echoes the sentiment of the whole Catholic world, which with wonderful unanimity proclaims its veneration for the august Father of the faithful, and offers itself, as a shield, to the Sovereign of Rome.”  He adds, that “his mind revolts from those fallacious maxims, which some persons try to insinuate into the feeble minds of the people, throwing doubts on the incontestable rights of the Church, and that he looks with contempt on such intrigues.”  As however both the Senator and his colleagues are nominees of the Pope, and as a brother of the Marquis is a Cardinal, I feel sceptical as to the value of their opinion.  The next paragraph tells me, that in order to testify their devotion to the Papacy the inhabitants of Rome illuminated their houses last night in honour of the feast.  Unfortunately, I happened to walk out yesterday evening, and observed that the lamps were very few and far between, while in the only illuminated house I entered I found the proprietor grumbling at the expense which the priests had insisted on his incurring.  I have then a whole column about the proceedings at the “Propaganda” on the festival of the Epiphany, now some days ago.