The emancipation of the nations from the power of the priest is a vast object not yet attained, but towards the accomplishment of which, nevertheless, our generation is making gigantic strides. Above all, this progress seems marvellous and divinely impelled, when one remembers that the gradual destruction of priestcraft is the work of the priesthood itself. What enduring consolidation would not the Papacy have obtained, had Pius IX. continued the system of reform with which he commenced his reign, and sincerely identified himself with the Italian nation! An overruling Providence, however, blinded the eyes of the wavering monk for the good of his unfortunate people, and left him to travel on the perverse and misguided road of his predecessors--that is to say, to trade away Roman honor and Christian spirit for the help of the foreigner, vilely selling the blood of his countrymen. The Italian nation, which might have been so well and long deceived, has now seen these impostors, the priests, walking with cross in hand at the head of the foreign troops pitted against Italian patriots. The writer has with his own eyes more than once witnessed priests leading the Austrians against the Liberals. To serve the Papacy they have excited and maintained brigandage, devastating the southern provinces with horrible crimes, and fomenting by every means in their power the dissolution of national unity, so happily but hardly constituted. Another sign of human progress in our day is the closer tie establishing itself between the aristocracy and the people. There still exist some oligarchs everywhere, more or lest callous, more or less insolent, who affect the arrogance and authority of former times, when the outrageous and intolerable feudal pretensions were in full force. But they are few in number, and the greater part of the nobility (noble not only by birth, but in soul) associate with os, and mingle their aspirations with ours. To this last type belonged the brother of Irene, who undertook the unlucky military affair we related in the last chapter, with the idea of rescuing his beloved sister from the brigands, into whose hands he believed she had fallen an unwilling victim. But when he learned that those he had fought against were Romans of noble and lofty spirit, and very far from the assassins he had pictured, he did not fail to compliment the valor of his countrymen; and when he further learned that Qrazio, to whose generosity he owed his life, was the legal husband of his sister, and that she loved him so tenderly, his maimer and opinion changed entirely. These considerations had pleaded already in favor of Irene, who, upon seeing her brother, threw herself at his feet, clasping his knees in a flood of tears, which flowed the faster at the remembrance of her dead father, whom he represented in face and voice.