The present Pope, who has assumed the name of Pius the Sixth, is a tall, well-made man, about sixty years of age, but retaining in his look all the freshness of a much earlier period of life. He lays a greater stress on the ceremonious part of religion than his predecessor Ganganelli, in whose reign a great relaxation of church-discipline is thought to have taken place. The late Pope was a man of moderation, good sense, and simplicity of manners; and could not go through all the ostentatious parade which his station required, without reluctance, and marks of disgust. He knew that the opinions of mankind had undergone a very great change since those ceremonies were established; and that some of the most respectable of the spectators considered as perfectly frivolous many things which formerly had been held as sacred. A man of good sense may seem to lay the greatest weight on ceremonies which he himself considers as ridiculous, provided he thinks the people, in whose sight he goes through them, are impressed with a conviction of their importance; but if he knows that some of the beholders are entirely of a different way of thinking, he will be strongly tempted to evince, by some means or other, that he despises the fooleries he performs, as much as any of them. This, in all probability, was the case with Ganganelli; who, besides, was an enemy to fraud and hypocrisy of every kind. But, however remiss he may have been with regard to the etiquette of his spiritual functions, every body acknowledges his diligence and activity in promoting the temporal good of his subjects. He did all in his power to revive trade, and to encourage manufactures and industry of every kind. He built no churches, but he repaired the roads all over the ecclesiastical state; he restrained the malevolence of bigots, removed absurd prejudices, and promoted sentiments of charity and good-will to mankind in general, without excepting even heretics. His enemies, the Jesuits, with an intention to make him odious in the eyes of his own subjects, gave him the name of the Protestant Pope. If they supposed that this calumny would be credited, on account of the conduct above mentioned, they at once paid the highest compliment to the Pope and the Protestant religion. The careless manner in which Ganganelli performed certain functions, and the general tenour of his life and sentiments, were lamented by politicians, as well as by bigots. However frivolous the former might think many ceremonies in themselves, they still considered them as of political importance, in such a government as that of Rome; and the Conclave held on the death of the late Pope, are thought to have been in some degree influenced by such considerations in chusing his successor. The present Pope, before he was raised to that dignity, was considered as a firm believer in all the tenets of the Roman Church, and a strict and scrupulous observer of all its injunctions and ceremonials. As his