have taken more time if necessary. He had no need to precipitate events, as he so recklessly did, by declaring war when there was positively no preparation made for it. We shall presently see whether he were not one of those whom Providence deprives of reason when it has resolved on their destruction. In the absence of more effective preparations, the small garrison at Rome of five thousand men was withdrawn in order to augment the army which all France believed was destined to crush the formidable Teuton and capture Berlin. If, however, this had been Napoleon’s only object in recalling the troops, he could have accomplished it as easily by ordering four thousand five hundred of the Roman garrison to join the invading army, leaving the remaining five hundred to guard the city of the Popes. This smaller number would surely have been as able as five thousand to repel a Piedmontese force of sixty thousand men. But there was question of more than mere physical power. So long as it was evident that France protected the Papal city, whether by a greater or smaller number of soldiers, the legions of Piedmont never would have marched against it. Napoleon’s minister, M. de Gramont, revealed the pretext: “It is certainly not from strategetical necessity that we evacuate the Roman States, but the political urgency is obvious. We must conciliate the good-will of the Italian Cabinet.” Much, indeed, it availed them. Viterbo was evacuated on the 4th of August. The last remnant of French troops embarked at Civita Vecchia, partly on the 4th and partly on the 6th, the very days on which the French army experienced its first reverses at Weissemberg, Wœrth and Spikeren. Instead of hesitating to perform a most cowardly act, which, viewing it only politically, proclaimed his weakness to all Europe, the Emperor Napoleon made all haste to complete it. He expressed regret. Who will say that he was sincere? Had he not perfected the master-work of his reign—his grand transalpine scheme? The Piedmontese minister, Visconti Venosta, gives a very distinct reply. Writing to the Piedmontese representatives at foreign courts, this minister says that as several governments had desired to know their views in regard to the relation of passing events with the Roman question, his government had no hesitation in making the clearest explanations. The convention of 15th September, 1864, had not sufficed to avert the causes arising abroad which hindered the settlement of the Roman difficulty. He then accuses the Roman Court of having assumed a hostile attitude in the centre of the peninsula, and that the consequences of such a position might be serious for Piedmont on occasion of the Franco-Prussian war and the complications to which it might give rise. Visconti Venosta further states that the basis of a new and definite solution of the Roman question had been confidentially recognized in principle, and was subject only to the condition of opportunity.