The city of Rome owes its present state of desolation to the popes: it is they who have made it what it is. The desert between the Coliseum and the church of St. John Lateran is a record of Gregory VII., the paramour of the Countess Matilda: the ruins of the Borgo, sometimes called the city Leonina, recall the treachery of Clement VII., the bastard of Medici; who, from recent investigations, has been suspected of himself bringing in the army of Bourbon, and authorizing the sacking of Rome, with all the horrors related in the history of that period. The popes, to raise palaces for their, so-called, nephews, and to erect their churches, have destroyed the finest and most interesting monuments. And to what cause is to be attributed the scarcity of inhabitants in this city, which at one time in itself alone contained double the number of the present inhabitants of the whole of the Papal States? To the policy of the popes, who to shine the more conspicuously in insulated darkness, like a will-o'-the-wisp in a fog, have always desired a city of the dead, surrounded by a desert _campagna_. The system itself, therefore, is to be attacked, and not so much those who are at the head of it. They die, but the system is always living: and consequently men fitting for its service are never wanting. If I had been Pope, I might not have been any better one than Gregory VII., or Clement VII., or Pio Nono. I know that if some of the Italians had Pio Nono in their power, they would handle him very roughly; I, on the contrary, would not harm a hair of his head. I would, however, take care to place him where he should no more have it in his power to injure society. But what others would do to him personally, I would do to his Office; to his pretended spiritual authority, and to his ostentatious, nay, blasphemous, dignity. I would have the Papacy itself judged by the rational and religious in civilized society, and by them condemned to the ignominious death which it deserves. In this manner I was accustomed to deliver my sentiments on such topics as were presented by the occurrences of the day. Generally our political discussions terminated in religious reflections, as it was natural they should do. At that time all classes of the people felt what an insult, what an outrage it was on humanity, to have their city besieged in the manner it was, by an enemy equally base, hypocritical, and inconsistent.