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ISOLATION OF ROME.
There is, I think, no city in the world where Pilate's question, "What is truth ?" would be so hard to answer as in Rome.

In addition to the ordinary difficulties which everywhere beset the path of the foreigner in search of knowledge, there are a number of obstacles peculiar and special to Rome alone.
The whole policy of the government is directed towards maintaining the country in a state of isolation, towards drawing, in fact, a moral _cordon sanitaire_ round the Papal dominions.

Indeed, if one lived long in Rome, one would get to doubt the reality of anything.

When I last came to Rome straight from Tuscany, seething in the turmoil of its new- bought liberties, I could hardly believe that only six months ago there had been war in Italy within two hundred miles from the Papal city, that the fate of Italy still hung trembling in the balance, and that the chief province of the country was still in open revolt against its rulers.
There was no sign, no trace, scarce a symptom even of what had passed or was passing in the world without.