disorderly elements of the population. To resist all these contrary forces, Pius IX. had only a popularity which, though for the time immense, was founded almost completely on imagination. 'It was,' said Mr Petre, 'the name and known views of Pius, rather than his acts, which aroused so much interest.' If for 'known views' be substituted 'supposed views,' the remark exactly describes the situation. Popularity is very well, but a government cannot long subsist on the single fact of the popularity of the sovereign. When the Roman mob began to cry: 'Viva Pio Nono _solo_,' the fate of the experiment was sealed. Real control slipped from the hands that nominally wielded it. 'The influence,' Mr Petre wrote to Sir George Hamilton, 'of one individual of the lower class, Angelo Brunetti, hardly known but by his nickname of Ciceruacchio, has for the last month kept the peace of the city more than any power possessed by the authorities, from the command which he exerts over the populace.' It was Ciceruacchio who preserved order when in July 1847 the air was full of rumours of a vast reactionary plot, which aimed at carrying off the Pope, and putting things back as they were under Gregory. That such a plot was ever conceived, or, at anyrate, that it received the sanction of the high personages whose names were mentioned in connection with it, is generally doubted now; but it was believed in by many of the representatives of foreign Powers then in Italy. The public mind in Rome was violently disturbed. Austria made the excitement the excuse for occupying the town of Ferrara, where, by the accepted interpretation of the Treaty of Vienna, she had only the right to garrison the fortress. This aggression called forth a strong remonstrance from the Pope's Secretary of State, Cardinal Ferretti; and though a compromise was arrived at through the mediation of Lord Palmerston, the feeling against Austria grew more and more exasperated in the Roman states, and the Pope consented, not, it seemed, much against the grain, to preparations being taken in hand with a view to the possible eventuality of war.