On the night of the 6th of December 1846, the whole line of the Apennines from Liguria to Calabria was illuminated. A hundred years before, a stone thrown by the child Balilla had given the signal for the expulsion of the Austrians from Genoa: this was the memory flashed from height to height by countless beacons, but while celebrating the past, they were the fiery heralds of a greater revolution. The upheaval of Europe did not become a fact, however, for another year. Meantime, the Roman States attracted more attention than any other part of the peninsula, from the curiosity awakened by the progress of the experiment of which they were the scene. It is not doubtful that at the first moment Pius IX. was under the impression that the problem he had taken in hand was eminently simple. A little goodwill on the part of everybody, an amnesty to heal old sores, and a few administrative reforms, ought, he thought, to set everything right. Such was not the opinion of intelligent onlookers who were students of politics--especially if they were foreigners, and could therefore keep their heads moderately cool in the prevailing excitement. The wave of a wand may seem to effect marvels, but long and silent causes prepare the way for each event. Now what had been going on for years in the Roman States was not the process of gradual growth, but the process of rapid disintegration. The Temporal Power of the Popes had died without anyone noticing it, and there was nothing left but a body in the course of dissolution. Every foreigner in Rome during the reign of Gregory XVI. bore witness that his government depended for its existence absolutely on the Swiss Guards. In 1845, Count Rossi told Guizot that without the Swiss regiments the government in the Legations and the Marches 'would be overthrown in the twinkling of an eye.' The British agent in Rome, writing during the Conclave, bore this out by the statement, which applied not to one portion of the Roman states, but to all, that 'the government could not stand without the protection of Austria and the immediate presence of the Swiss.' On the accession of Pius IX., the props, such as they were, which had prevented an earlier collapse of the Temporal Power, were either removed or rendered useless. The Swiss might as well have been disbanded at once as retained merely to be a bone of contention between the new government and the people, since it was understood that a vigorous use of their services would never be resorted to; while Austrian protection was transferred from the Pope to the disaffected party in the Church, which consisted in a large proportion of the cardinals and of the inferior clergy who were afraid that, with the reform of abuses, they would lose their influence over the lower class of their flocks. The English diplomatic agents in Italy also firmly believed that Austria coupled with her support of the ultramontane malcontents the direct encouragement of the