In the Region of Monti, (the largest district of Rome, including three of the seven hills, Quirinal, Esquiline, Caelian,) which was inhabited by the faction of Colonna, there stood an antique statue of some river-god whom the Romans called Marforio. In the Region of Parione by Piazza Navona, which was the heart of the mediæval City, near Palazzo Braschi, there stood another antique statue whom the Romans called Pasquino and said that under him the Book of Wisdom for all time was buried. And it was the fashion to pretend that these two statues conversed on current topics, emitting epigrams in the darkness of the night, which were found in writing on their pedestals in the morning. All persons who had an axe to grind at an enemy’s expense made use of this convention: and a folio volume would not contain the witty caustic cynical pasquinades (ecce nomen,) which from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century have been found at Pasquino and Marforio. This method of spleen-splitting was not neglected by Colonna and Savelli. Pasquino became loquacious, bitter, oh and smart—but, smart! One epigram may be quoted as a specimen of the railing accusations brought against the Holiness of the Pope by way of reflection on His alleged simoniacal election, at times when He levied taxes or forced loans for the Crusade, or gave no remission of the chancery fees on promotion to fiefs and benefices. “ALEXANDER SELLS THE KEYS, THE ALTARS, CHRIST. “HE BOUGHT THEM; AND HE HAS THE RIGHT TO SELL. But the most virulent of all anonymous attacks, was a pamphlet called _A Letter to Silvio Savelli_ which pretended to have come from the Spanish camp at Taranto. It proclaimed to the Elect-Emperor Maximilian and the sovereigns of Europe the crimes which were said to have been committed by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, Duke Cesare de Valentinois and Madonna Lucrezia Borgia d’Este: perfidy, carnage, rapine, adultery, incest, the heresy of Bulgaria, simony, assassination. Men who have noticed the rabid inconsequence, the grotesque impossibility and filthiness, which characterises certain foreign abuse of England at the present time, will understand the extent to which envious rage will go. Men of the Twenty-fifth Century, who read that degenerate literature, may attach to it an importance as undeserved as that which the Twentieth Century attaches to the _Letter to Silvio Savelli_ of the Fifteenth. Humanity, with slight external differences, is identical in all ages. The Borgia were only men and women, boys and girls, when all is said; and the charges made against them are infinitely too monstrously inhuman to be true. Nature terribly would have avenged Herself on such infringements of Her law.