“The three genuine and intellectual scholars of my acquaintance, Morelli, Garatoni, and Fontana, are all ecclesiastics. They are, however, only ecclesiastics by profession, for I have not found in them the slightest trace either of a belief in the dogmas of Catholicism, or of the pietism which you meet with in Germany. _When an Italian has once ceased to be a slave of the Church, he never seems to trouble his head about such matters at all. Metaphysical speculations are utterly foreign to his nature, as they were to the old Romans._ Hence the vacuity of mind which has become general since the suppression of freedom, except in the case of those who find a sphere of action in writing literary and historical memoirs. Their public men are immeasurably behind the Germans in knowledge and cultivation.” What matter for reflection there is here, the reader will not need our assistance to point out. Let those who censure Protestantism for the spirit of speculation it is connected with, either as cause or effect, consider how important a part that speculative tendency plays in sustaining the intellectual activity of a people. When Niebuhr arrives at Rome, the picture that he draws is still darker. Even the antiquities of the city seem to have given him little pleasure; he was more disturbed at what had been taken away than gratified by the little that remained. Then, although he well knew that the life of an ambassador at Rome could not be free from restraint and interruption, yet the courtly formalities he was compelled to observe were far more vexatious than he had anticipated. Housekeeping, too, perplexed him. Things were dear, and men not too honest. “Without a written agreement nothing can be done.” In a letter to Savigny, he writes thus:— “Rome has no right to its name; at most, it should be called New Rome. Not one single street here goes in the same direction as the old one; it is an entirely foreign vegetation that has grown up on a part of the old soil, as insignificant and thoroughly modern in its style as possible, without nationality, without history. It is very characteristic that the really ancient and the modern city lie almost side by side. “There are nowhere any remains of anything that it was possible to remove. The ruins all date from the time of the emperors; and he who can get up an enthusiasm about them, must at least rank Martial and Sophocles together.... St Peter’s, the Sistine Chapel, and the Loggie, are certainly splendid; but even St Peter’s is disfigured internally by the wretched statues and decorations.... Science is utterly extinct here. Of philologists, there is none worthy of the name except the aged De Rossi, who is near his end. The people are apathetic.