When this presentation was over, the Pope requested the company to kneel, and then prayed in Italian for the spiritual welfare of England, calling her the land of the saints, and alluding to the famous _Non Angli, sed angeli_.
He exhorted all present "to look forward to the good time when justice and mercy should meet and embrace each other as brothers;" and finally, with faltering voice, and tears rolling down his cheeks, gave his apostolical benediction.

Of course, if you can shut your eyes to facts, all this is very pretty and sentimental.

If the Romans could be happy enough to possess the constitution of Thibet, and have a spiritual and a temporal Grand Llama, they could not have fixed on a more efficient candidate for the former post than the present Pope; but the crowds of French soldiers which lined the streets to coerce the chosen people, formed a strange comment on the value of pontifical piety.

It is too true that the better the Pope the worse the ruler.

Probably the thousands of Romans who thronged the Corso knew more about the blessings of the Papal sway than the few score strangers, who volunteered to pay the homage to the Sovereign of Rome which the Romans refuse to render.
To-day the demonstration was repeated on the Porta Pia; and the Vatican, indignant at its powerlessness to suppress these symptoms of disaffection, is anxious to stir up the crowd to some overt act of insurrection, which may justify or, at any rate, palliate the employment of violent measures.