Happily, Pasquino was not a prophet, and the affairs of Italy are not as they were and had been during so many ages of despair. From these specimens of Italian satire we should expect to find the people of Italy effective with the satirical pencil also. The spirit of caricature is in them, but the opportunities for its exercise and exhibition have been few and far between. As in Spain there was an exhaustive depletion of intellectual force, so in Italy the human mind, during late centuries, has been crushed under a dead weight of priests. Professor Charles Eliot Norton, in his "Travel and Study in Italy," tells us that Roman artists can not now so much as copy well the masterpieces by which they are surrounded. "The utter sterility," he says, "and impotence of mind which have long been and are still conspicuous at Rome, the deadness of the Roman imagination, the absence of all intellectual energy in literature and in art, are the necessary result of the political and moral servitude under which the Romans exist. Where the exercise of the privileges of thought is dangerous, the power of expression soon ceases. For a time--as during the seventeenth century in Italy--the external semblance of originality may remain, and mechanical facility of execution may conceal the absence of real life; but by degrees the very semblance disappears, and facility of execution degenerates into a mere trick of the hand. The Roman artists of the present time have not, in general, the capacity even of good copyists. They can mix colors and can polish marble, but they are neither painters nor sculptors." And yet (as the same author remarks) with the first breath of freedom the dormant capacity of the Italians awakes. In Italy, as in France, Spain, and Cuba, caricature dies when freedom is gone, and lives again as soon as the oppressor is removed. In 1848, when the Revolution had gained ascendency in Rome, a satirical paper appeared, called _Il Don Pirlone_, published weekly, and illustrated by strong, though rudely executed, caricatures. Don Pirlone was the name of a familiar character in Italian comedy and farce. The pictures in this work abundantly justify the encomiums of Professor Norton and Mr. Story, who both pronounce them to be full of spirit and vigor, proving that the satiric fire of the early pasquinades is not extinguished. [Illustration: He has begun the Service with Mass, and completed it with Bombs. (From _Il Don Pirlone_, Rome, June 15th, 1849.)]