The Express.
London, England, 1853-05-23 00:00:00

ITALY.

ROME, MAY 14.

The 16th inst. is fixed for the Pope's visit to Porto
d'Anzio, and several baggage waggons, escorted by
gendarmes, left the capital last night with the neces-
sary materiel for court comfort, the little town itself
presenting no resources worthy of notice. Whilst
the creature conveniences of His Holiness are thus
provided for by the major-domo and palace officials,
his personal and political safety will be equally gua-
ranteed by an escort of French cavalry, at the
especial request of the Pope, who is said to have
asked for it foreseeing that it would attend him at
all events. The French are naturally jealous lest
the head of the church should abstract himself even
temporarily from their surveillance, and as an inevita-
ble consequence add weight to the already predomi-
nant influence of Austria in the Papal States.
The rumour of a meeting between the Emperor
of Austria and the Pope at Loreto, to fulfil
the vows of pilgrimage made by both in times of
political difficulty, seems to be unfounded, at least
for the present, nor is it at all likely that his Holi-
ness could get permission to leave the immediate
neighbourhood of Rome, for, great as is the difficulty
that his subjects experience in procuring passports
for travelling, Pio Nono himself would, in the pre-
sent state of affairs, find greater difficulty still.
The entente cordial. hitherto prevalent between
the Papal government and the French military au-
thorities has much diminished since the appointment
of General Montreal, and the disappointment felt at
Paris since the Pope's decided refusal to go and
crown the Emperor adds to the aigreur of their occa-
sional intercourse. I mentioned in my last that a
police employe named Rufini had been dismissed
from office, at the express demand of the French
general, for insolence to a French officer who had
come to request a passport for a friend. This em-
ploye is now stated to be merely transferred to a
better post in another branch of the police depart-
ment; so that General Montreal's vengeance has, in
fact, been of great service to Signor Rufini.
The Papal Governor of Palombara, a town near
Tivoli, about 20 miles from Rome, hu been seized
and imprisoned by the French, for having granted
shooting licenses and permission to carry arms to
several of the inhabitants of his district. General
Gemeau did no such unconrteous actions as these to
the temporal representatives of his Holiness ; but, on
the other hand, General Gemeau derived many pecu-
niary advantages from the court and municipality of
Rome, which General Montreal disdains to accept.
Amongst otherpecuniary pickings Gen. Gemean used to
receive a gratification every month from the munici-
pality as compensation money for the dinners he
occasionally gave or was supposed to give to his offi-
cers. The present commander was not a little sur-
prised when the same sum was offered to him, but
he declined it, observing that he did not wish his
officers to be indebted to the municipality of Rome
for their dinners.

The Austrian officer in command of the garrison at
Perugia was lately irritated at a satire, the product
of an unknown pen, which made its appearance on
the walls of the town directing its iambics against
the imperial army. Unable to discovet the author,
the officer requested the Papal governor to furnish
him with a list of all the poets of Perugia, a
somewhat embarrassing commission to execute
in a country where rhyming seems the natural
language. However, the magistrate, after due criti-
cism, produced five individuals, whom he considered
to have drunk of the Hyperean springs sufficiently
deeply tobe entitled poets. The Austrian had them
all stripped in the presence of a medical officer,whom
he modered to examine them, and report upon the
physical capacity of each for receiving blows with a
stick. Naturally belonging to a genus irrilabile, and
of excitable nervous conformation, the unfortunate
poets were set down by the surgeon at a charitably
low number of bastinadoes, and were still more gra-
tified when the officer, instead of actually carrying
into execution his "cutting up," an operation even
more galling than that of hostile reviowers, contented
himself with addressing them in the following terms ;1
" Gentlemen, you have just heard the number of
stripes which the doctor considers each of you ca-

pable of supporting—they will assuredly be adminis
tered to you upon the reappearance of any &pony.
mous satire. You now know the price of your verses,
I wish you a very good morning.
The purchase-money for the Pia Latina Railway,
amounting to 110,000 scudi, in addition to the
10,000 scudi security, already deposited, has been
paid into Torlonia's bank, so that the affair is now
considered as settled, and the Romans are talking of
going to Frascati by rail this autumn. A branch
will probably be projected to Porto d'Anzio, thus
bringing Rome into immediate communication with
the sea, and rendering the restoration of the magni-
ficent Neronian part a work alike advisable and
advantageous.