The uneducated or half-educated traveller, who surveys the uncultivated and malarious plains around the city of the Popes, at once discovers, in this desolation which prevails, an argument against priestly rule. With a little more information, however, he would see the ruins and the vestiges of a mighty empire, the works of which, like its conquests, were the wonder of the world. How such works came to be so successfully executed is easily understood, when it is remembered that heathen Rome commanded the wealth, the intellect, and the strong arms of many subject nations. The Popes, on the other hand, though they often tried, as did Pius IX. among the rest, to cultivate the Campagna and drain the Pontine Marshes, had so little means at their disposal, that they could never accomplish anything important. Among other difficulties that the Roman Pontiffs had to contend with, was that of obtaining an outlet towards the sea, whilst ancient Rome commanded all the seas and lands of the known world. Surely it does not require a Solomon to understand that without access to the Mediterranean, it is physically impossible to drain and cultivate such low-lying lands as the Pontine Marshes. At Perugia the Holy Father received the kindly visit of the Archduke Charles, who came, on the part of his father Leopold, to compliment the Sovereign Pontiff. Archduke Maximilian, of Austria, who, at the time, little thought of a Mexican Empire, came to salute the Pope at Pesaro. Neither he nor Pius IX. had been, as yet, betrayed and abandoned by Napoleon III. The Grand Duke of Tuscany and all his family, together with the Dukes of Parma and Modena, came to pay their homage at Bologna. The Holy Father accepted their pressing invitation to visit Tuscany and Modena, the sovereigns showing publicly, in presence of their people, such reverence and devotedness as recalled the faith and loyalty of the Middle Ages. The Pope himself bears witness to the truly noble and chivalrous conduct of these provinces. “He introduced us himself into Florence,” says Pius IX., in speaking of the Grand Duke Leopold, “walking by our side, and accompanied us to every Tuscan city which we visited. All the archbishops and bishops of his States, all the clergy, the corporate bodies, the magistrates and the nobles showed their delight by testifying their devotion to us in a thousand ways. Not only at Florence, but wherever we went in Tuscany, the people from town and country, far and near, came forth to greet us, acclaiming the Chief Pontiff of the church with such ardent affection, showing such an intense desire to see him, to do him reverence, to receive his benediction, that our fatherly heart was moved to its inmost depths.” On the Holy Father’s return to Rome there was high jubilee among all classes of the people a fact which the traducers of Pius IX. would do well to note, as it proves beyond a doubt how idle and ill-founded was all their clamor, to the effect that in the holy city his