Of course, if you can shut your eyes to facts, all this is very pretty and sentimental. If the Romans could be happy enough to possess the constitution of Thibet, and have a spiritual and a temporal Grand Llama, they could not have fixed on a more efficient candidate for the former post than the present Pope; but the crowds of French soldiers which lined the streets to coerce the chosen people, formed a strange comment on the value of pontifical piety. It is too true that the better the Pope the worse the ruler. Probably the thousands of Romans who thronged the Corso knew more about the blessings of the Papal sway than the few score strangers, who volunteered to pay the homage to the Sovereign of Rome which the Romans refuse to render. To-day the demonstration was repeated on the Porta Pia; and the Vatican, indignant at its powerlessness to suppress these symptoms of disaffection, is anxious to stir up the crowd to some overt act of insurrection, which may justify or, at any rate, palliate the employment of violent measures. So in order to incense the crowd, the public executioner was sent out in a cart guarded by gendarmes to excite some active expression of anger on the part of the mob. It is hard for us to understand the feeling with which the Italians, and especially the Romans, regard the _carnefice_. He is always a condemned murderer, whose life is spared on condition of his assuming the hated office, and, except on duty, he is never allowed to leave the quarter of St Angelo, where he dwells, as otherwise his life would be sacrificed to the indignation of the crowd, who regard his presence as a contamination. The poor fellow looked sheepish and frightened enough, as he patrolled slowly with his escort up and down the crowded Porta Pia thoroughfare; but even this insult failed to effect its object. The device was too transparent for an Italian crowd not to detect it, and the ill-omened _cortege_ of the "Pope's representative," as the Romans styled the executioner, passed by without any comment. MARCH 7.