I have seen estimates by Gavazzi and other Italians, of the proportion who can read in the Roman States. It is somewhere about one in a hundred. The reader will take the statement at what it is worth. I had no means of testing its accuracy; but all my inquiries on the subject led me to believe that the overwhelming majority cannot read. And where is the use of learning one's letters in a land where there are no books; and there are none that deserve the name in Rome. The book-stalls in Italy are heaped with the veriest rubbish: the "Book of Dreams," "Rules for Winning at the Lottery," "The Five Dolours of the Virgin," "Tracts on the Miracles of the Saints," "Relations," professedly given by Christ about his sufferings, and said to have been found in his sepulchre, and in other places equally likely. At Rome, on the streets at least, where all other kinds of rubbish are tolerated, even this rubbish is not suffered to exist; for there, book-stalls I saw none. There are, however, one or two miserable book-shops where these things may be had. There was but one newspaper (so called, I presume, because it contained no news) published in Rome at the time of my visit,--the _Giornale di Roma_, which, I presume, still occupies the field alone. It contains a daily list of the arrivals and departures (foreigners, of course, for the gates of Rome never open to the Romans), the proclamations of the Government, the days of the lottery, and such matters. Under the foreign head were chronicled the consecration of Catholic temples, the visits of royal personages, a profound silence being observed on all political facts and speculations. And this is all the Romans can know, through legitimate channels, of what is going on beyond the walls of Rome. A daily paper was started during the Republic, and admirably managed; but, of course, it was suppressed on the return of the Papal Government. A few copies of the _Times_ reach Rome every morning. They are not given out till towards mid-day, for they must first be read; and if the "editorials" are not to the taste of the Sacred College, they are not given out at all. The paper, during my short stay, was stopped for nearly a week on end; and the disappointment was the greater, that rumours were then current in Rome that something was on the tapis in Paris, and that the change in the constitution of France, whatever it might be, would not be postponed till the May of 1852, as was then believed in the north of Europe, but would be attempted in the beginning of December 1851. The tidings of the _coup d'etat_, which met me on the morning of the 3d December in the south of France, brought the full realization of these rumours. In the _Giornale di Roma_ not a strayed dog can be advertised without permission of the censor. In Brescia there is a censorship for gravestones; and in Rome a strict watch is kept over the English burying-ground, lest any one should write a verse of Scripture above a heretic's grave.