Political or social life there was none, and the foreign element, whether the regular or the transitory, was divided by its nationalities, and cut off absolutely from the Roman. Only the English and American mingled to any extent, the foreign Catholics finding their way, with such Protestants as gave hope of conversion, into the clerical world, which, from all that I could see of it, offered little attraction to the fugitive visitors. Wide-eyed, hurried Americans came, saw, and bought a picture, and went away again; English sightseers came for Christmas or Easter, and bought a few old masters; but the mass of those who stayed for long were invalids, who settled down and tried to keep as much in the sun as possible, for the universal belief then was that to live out of the sunshine was to contract mortal malaria. It was the most unreal world I have ever lived in, whether we use the word unreal in the sense of shadowy or poetical. Rome was in fact at that time a spectacle never before or since seen in the world. Ruled by an absolute government, theocratic and therefore considering its authority beyond all human attack, but besieged on all sides by an invading liberalism, which had already captured all its outposts and undermined its position at the centre, it, still defiant, refused to make a single concession to the spirit of the epoch, and bade defiance to diplomacy and insurrection alike. All its former allies from north and south were in refuge within the walls of the city, the King of Naples and all his court offering the daily spectacle of a parade of their downfall as they drove through the streets. Rome itself was a huge cloister in which the only animation was in the processions of priests and students of the theological seminaries, or the more melancholy funerals in which the hooded and gowned friars added gloom to the mystery of our common lot,--no industry except those of jewelry and art and that of ecclesiastical apparatus. The principal revenues were the charity of the outside world,--St. Peter's pence. Government was not by law, but by the arbitrary decisions of the most incompetent of officials, enforced by the bayonets of a foreign army, the soldiers of which despised the population, and lived in the most complete separation from it. The Pope himself had little affection for his French protectorate, which urged, and sometimes effected, certain improvements which he regarded as innovations and invasions. I had, soon after my arrival, a case before the lower tribunal which showed how the administration of justice was regarded. Having a relapse into the malady that had followed my breakdown in Switzerland, which was exaggerated by the heat of Rome, I was ordered by my physician to Ariccia to recruit, and I left my apartment, which was also the consulate, and took quarters at the little Ariccian inn which was the resort of the artists at that date.