Nay, were Rome to resume her subjection, the past has been too much broken up elsewhere for a quiet return to the old régime, even in Italy. The ecclesiastical courts have been abolished in Piedmont, and the Sardinian states henceforth stand in point of free discussion on a level with Germany, if not with France. The Pope will be fain to permit more in Genoa or Turin than the eating of eggs during Lent--to permit a canvassing of Papal authority fatal to its existence. But in Tuscany, for many generations, a spirit of free discussion has existed among the educated classes: the reforming spirit of Ricci has never died in the capital of Tuscany, and the memory of Leopold protected the freedom of thought: a sudden and a new value has been given to that prepared state of the Tuscan mind by the existence of free institutions in Piedmont. Giusti will no longer need to traverse the frontier of Italy in search of a printer. With free discussion in two of the Italian states, Milan will not be deaf, nor Naples without a whisper. Italy _must_ sooner or later get to know her own mind, and then the Bishop of Rome will have to devise a new position for himself. Abroad, in Catholic Europe, there is the same disruption between the past and the future. The Archbishop of Cologne exposed, in his rashness, the waning sanctity of the Church; the Neo-Catholics have exposed its frangible condition. Sectarian distinctions are torn to pieces in Hungary by the temporal conflicts, and the dormant spirit of a national Protestantism survives in sullen hatred to alien rule. Austria proper is pledged to any course of political expediency which may defer the evil day of Imperial accountability, and will probably, in waxing indifferency, see fit to put Lombardy on a spiritual par with Piedmont. France is precarious in her allegiance. Two countries alone remain in unaltered relation to the See of Rome--Spain, the most bigoted of the children of Rome; and Ireland, the most faithful. But Ireland is impotent. And to this day Spain asserts, and preserves, the _national_ independence which she has retained throughout the most arrogant days of Romish supremacy, throughout the tyrant régime of Torquemada. Even court intrigue dares not prostitute the _nationality_ of Spain to Roman influence. Rome is the talk of the world, and the return of Pius to the Vatican can not restore the silent submission of the faithful. He is but to be counted among the "fashionable arrivals."--_London Spectator._ CIVIL LIBERTY DEFINED.--This is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the commonwealth; that let no man in this world expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.--_John Milton._ [From the London Examiner.] THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.