I often during my winters in Rome went to paint from nature in the Campagna, either with Somerville or with Lady Susan Percy, who drew very prettily. Once we set out a little later than usual, when, driving through the Piazza of the Bocca della Verita, we both called out, "Did you see that? How horrible! "It was the guillotine; an execution had just taken place, and had we been a quarter of an hour earlier we should have passed at the fatal moment. Under Gregory XVI. everything was conducted in the most profound secrecy; arrests were made almost at our very door, of which we knew nothing; Mazzini was busily at work on one side, the Jesuitical party actively intriguing, according to their wont, on the other; and in the mean time society went on gaily at the surface, ignorant of and indifferent to the course of events. We were preparing to leave Rome when Gregory died. We put off our journey to see his funeral, and the Conclave, which terminated, in the course of scarcely two days, in the election of Pius IX. We also saw the new Pope's coronation, and witnessed the beginning of that popularity which lasted so short a time. Much was expected from him, and in the beginning of his reign the moderate liberals fondly hoped that Italy would unite in one great federation, with Pius IX. at the head of it; entirely forgetting how incompatible a theocracy or government by priests ever must be with all progress and with liberal institutions. Their hopes were soon blighted, and after all the well-known events of 1848 and 1849, a reaction set in all over Italy, except in gallant little Piedmont, where the constitution was maintained, thanks to Victor Emmanuel, and especially to that great genius, Camillo Cavour, and in spite of the disastrous reverses at Novara. Once more in 1859 Piedmont went to war with Austria, this time with success, and with the not disinterested help of France. One province after another joined her, and Italy, freed from all the little petty princes, and last, not least, from the Bourbons, has become that one great kingdom which was the dream of some of her greatest men in times of old.