The ecclesiastics, though a busier race, are still more exhausting. The kingdom of Naples alone has eighty-five prelates, with nearly one hundred thousand priests and persons of religious orders, the monks forming about a fourth of the whole! In this number the priesthood of Sicily is not included, which has to its own share no less than three archbishops and eleven bishops. Even the barren isle of Sardinia has one hundred and seventeen convents! Can any rational mind wonder at the profligacy, the idleness, and the dependence of the Italian peninsula, with such examples before it? The Pope daily has between two and three thousand monks loitering through the streets of Rome. Besides these, he has on his ecclesiastical staff twenty cardinals, four archbishops, ninety-eight bishops, and a clergy amounting to nearly five per cent of his population. With those two millstones round her neck, Italy must remain at the bottom. She may be shaken and tossed by the political surges which roll above her head, but she never can be buoyant. She must cast both away before she can rise. Italy priest-ridden, and noble-ridden, and prince-ridden, must be content with her fate. Her only chance is in the shock, which will break away her encumbrances. We now come to the Avatar, in which liberty is looked for by all the romancers in Italy. On the 1st of June 1846, Pope Gregory XVI. died, at the age of 81. He was a man of feeble mind, but of rigid habits, willing to live after the manner of his fathers, and, above all things, dreading Italian change. The occasional attempts at introducing European improvements into the Roman territory struck him with undisguised alarm; and even his old age did not prevent his leaving six thousand state prisoners in the Roman dungeons. On the 16th of the same month the Bishop of Imola was chosen Pope. He was of an Italian family, which had occasionally held considerable offices; was a man of intelligence, though tinged with liberalism; and was one of the youngest of the Popes since Innocent III., who took the tiara at the age of 37. The Bishop of Imola was 54. Adopting the name of Pius IX., his first act was one of clemency. He published an amnesty for political offences, and threw open the prison doors. An act of this order is usual on the accession of a Pope. But the fears of the population had been so much heightened by the singular stubbornness of his predecessor, that the discovery of their having a merciful master produced a universal burst of rejoicing.