Every Sunday and Thursday evening too, at this hour, the French band plays for a short time in the Piazza.

Generally, this ceremony passes off in perfect quiet, and in truth attracts as little attention from bystanders as our file of guardsmen passing on their daily round from Charing Cross to the Tower.

On Sunday evening last, a considerable crowd, numbering, as far as I can learn, some two or three thousand persons, chiefly men and boys, assembled round the band, and as the patrols marched off down the Corso, and towards the Castle of Saint Angelo, followed them with shouts of "Viva l'Italia," "Viva Napoleone," and, most ominous of all, "Viva Cavour." As soon as the patrols had passed the crowd dispersed, and there was, apparently, an end of the matter.

The next night poured with rain, with such a rain as only Rome can supply; and yet, in spite of the rain, a good number of people collected to see the guard march off, and again a few seditious or patriotic cries (the two terms are here synonymous) were heard.

Such things in Italy, and in Rome especially, are matters of grave importance, and the Government was evidently alarmed.