Who foresaw, or anticipated, or even dreamed of the atrocities of the Commune in Paris of 1871? What happened at Paris in the reign of the Commune will pale in wickedness before the reign of the internationalists in Rome. As Paris represents the theatre of worldliness, so Rome is the visible sanctuary of religion. _Corruptio optimi pessima._ Is there a man so simple or so ignorant of the temper and designs of the conspirators against civilized society in Europe, as well as in our own free country, who fancies that these desperate men will shrink from shaping their acts in accordance with their ulterior aims? No one who witnessed the reception of Garibaldi in Rome in the winter of 1875 can doubt as to who holds the place of leader among the most numerous class of the population of Italy. The views of this man and the party to which he belongs are no secret. “The fall of the Commune,” he wrote in June, 1873, “is a misfortune for the whole universe and a defeat for ever to be regretted.... I belong to the internationals, and I declare that if I should see arise a society of demons having for its object to combat sovereigns and priests, I would enroll myself in their ranks.” It is only the well-officered, strictly disciplined, and large army of Victor Emanuel that hinders Garibaldi from hoisting the red flag of the Commune in Rome and declaring an agrarian republic in Italy. But how long will the Italian army, with the present radicals at the head of affairs, remain intact and free from demoralization? “The heights infected, vales below Will soon with plague be rife.” The army is drawn from a population which the internationalists have penetrated and inoculated with their errors and designs, and their emissaries have been discovered tampering and fraternizing with the troops. Who can tell how near is the hour when St. Peter’s will be officially declared the pantheon of red-republican Italy, and the statue of Garibaldi will be placed on the high altar where now stands the image of the Crucified God-Man? This will not be the end but the prelude to the final act of the present impending tragedy, when the black flag will be unfurled and the palaces of Rome, with St. Peter’s and the Vatican, and all their records of the past and centuries of heaped-up treasures of art, will be reduced by petroleum and dynamite to a shapeless heap of ruins. To those who can tell a hawk from a handsaw this is the hidden animus and the logical sequence of the entrance of the Piedmontese army into Rome. This is the real reading of the hand-writing on the walls of Porta Pia: “Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice To our own lips.”