We brought to Rome the germ of an administration which had no existence; Rome, become the chief town of the Department of the Tiber, was superlatively well ruled. Its mortgage system it owes to us. The suppression of the convents, the sale of ecclesiastical property sanctioned by Pius VII. have diminished the faith in the permanence of the consecration of religious things. The famous _Index_, which still makes a little noise on our side of the Alps, makes none at all in Rome: for a few _bajocchi_ you obtain permission to read the forbidden work with a safe conscience. The _Index_ is one of those works which remain as evidences of the old times in the midst of the new. In the Republics of Rome and Athens, were not the titles of "King," the names of the great families adhering to the Monarchy respectfully preserved? It is only the French who foolishly take offense at their tombs and their annals, who hurl down the crosses, devastate the churches, out of grudge against the clergy of the Year of Grace 1000 or 1100. There is nothing more puerile or more stupid than those reminiscent outrages; nothing which would tend more to the belief that we are incapable of anything serious whatsoever, that the true principles of liberty will for ever remain unknown to us. Far from despising the past, we ought, as all nations do, to treat it as a venerable greybeard, who sits by our fireside telling what he has seen: what harm can he do us? He instructs and amuses us with his stories, his ideas, his language, his manners, his habits of former days; but he is without strength, and his hands are weak and trembling. Can it be that we are afraid of that contemporary of our fathers, who would already be with them in the tomb, if he could die, and who has no authority, save that of their dust? The French, passing through Rome, left their principles there: that is what always happens when the conquest is accomplished by a people more advanced in civilization than the people which undergoes that conquest, as witness the Greeks in Asia under Alexander, as witness the French in Europe under Napoleon. Bonaparte, when snatching sons from their mothers, when forcing the Italian nobility to leave its palaces and bear arms, was hastening the transformation of the national spirit. As to the physiognomy of Roman society, on days of concerts or balls one might have thought himself in Paris. The Altieris[658], the Palestrinas[659], the Zagarolos[660], the Del Dragos[661], the Lantes[662], the Lozzanos would not have felt strangers in the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain: still, some of those women wear a certain frightened air which has, I believe, to do with the climate. The charming Falconieri, for instance, always stands near a door, ready to fly to the Monte Mario if you look at her: the Villa Millini[663] belongs to her; a novel placed in that abandoned lodge, under the cypress trees, in view of the sea, would have its value.