Holy Father, the little spot of earth which the revolution has not yet taken from you is the only place in which the arts find the inspiration that is for them the breath of life, and the quiet without which that life cannot expand. The soul of the true artist is filled with unspeakable apprehension by the possibility of seeing these master-pieces destroyed or scattered abroad, these treasures plundered, all this wealth annihilated; and especially by the danger of seeing the ungraceful and meagre forms of modern utilitarianism usurp the place held by the manners, the habits, the face of all things in this privileged land of beauty, all consecrated by the admiration of ages. Alas! Holy Father, what is happening in the rest of Italy affords but too firm a ground for such apprehensions. The genius of destruction is abroad there, and proceeds to sweep away pitilessly what was the glory of ancient Italy. The spoliation and suppression of the religious orders are one of the most deadly blows ever aimed at the existence of the fine arts. Saddened by those forebodings, fearful of what the future may bring forth, the artists resident in Rome come to the feet of your Holiness to give utterance to their deep conviction that the splendor, the greatness, the very existence of the fine arts in Europe are inseparably connected with the maintenance of the beneficent power of the Sovereign Pontiffs. Were it not that the rival passions which divide Europe are of themselves fatally blind to consequences, the reign of your Holiness would suffice to render this truth evident to all. For while elsewhere national wealth is wasted in frivolous undertakings, or in preparing instruments of destruction, the modest revenues inherited by your Holiness are ever employed in continuing gloriously the noble labor of your predecessors. On the one hand, you have drawn from obscurity the beginnings of Christian art, thereby affording it new and precious data; on the other, you have adorned Rome and the Vatican with works which furnish a new and brilliant page to the grand history of art embodied in the Vatican itself. While elsewhere reigned trouble and agitation, here artists were able, beneath the blessed sway of your Holiness, to enjoy a kindly welcome, an unrestrained liberty, and the peaceful contemplation of those venerable structures and sites preserved so happily by the Pontifical government from the sad alterations blindly wrought in other cities by the troublous life of modern communities. May the Almighty One hear our prayer, and persuade both sovereigns and nations that their honor and glory will be measured, in coming ages, on the degree of protection they shall have afforded to the temporal power of the Papacy, which has ever been the unwearied promoter of the development of all the noblest faculties in man, and which alone can continue to be the custodian of the works of art originated by itself, and by it so faithfully treasured for