The Sun.
London, England, 1849-01-05 00:00:00

EVENING,

A

MAGAZINES, &c:—(CONTINU.ED).-
.F'RASER.

The present number of Prager wilL, be greedily
sought for, if only on account of the contents of one
page, one single page, in which we find three un-
published songs by the -late Thomas: Hood, and
beautiful songs they are too, bearing internal evi:
deice of their own authenticity. As an example• we
give _ _

Christendom; but ungnestionably his faith in a species
of supernatural interposition, not usually, now-a-days,
'received even by rigid Catholics, can only be traced to
the singular event recorded in his youth, to; which he
himself attributes his present position and his present
preservation.
" In- the year 1794 the young Mastai Verrtitti, then
but a tender. infant of the tender age of two, was re-
posing in his cradle in one of the vast salons Of the
ancient pallazzio of the family, at Senegallia, where he
first saw the light, at -a period when Italy was dis-
tracted by the outburst of the great French Revolution.
The chamber was deserted; the attendant nurse had
stolen out, to enjoy the society of some favourite cicisbee,
and naught resembling humanity remained in the apart-
ment save the slumbering child and the figure 'ot a
sacred abbess, Notre Donna de la Stella, which frowned
in awful sanctity from the walls. Suddenly a boar of
enormous size entered the chamber, having made its
way either wild from the adjacent hilts, or from a recess
adjoining, in which it had been detained by some mem-
bers of the family, to afford the Pleasure of a hUnt on the
,uhsequent day. The animal was naturally ferrxions,
And hunger ' had made it savage. It approached the
cradle, and was on the poh.t of sizing the child, awsk-
en«l by its noise. The snout of the brute, it is sail,
was in contact with the cheek of the infant, and in
another moment the child would have been borne oft in
its tusks, when suddenly a noise was heard, and the
!.;.pestry on which Notre Donna was emblazoned shook.
Tumour, and probably truth, aseribtd this to the romps
of the nurse and her lover in the adjoining apartment,
when to vase or statue was accidentally overturned
against the wall ; but the pious, and amongst others
the Pope himself, as well as his mother, devoutly attri-
buted it to the sainted interposition of the abbess; aid
;he child raising a cry, the attendant hurried to the
chamber, but a moment before the young hope of the
house would have been devoured or borne off.

" How touch of truth, or how much of imagination
there is in this !:bend, it is not for us to say; but the
incident certainly is still believed by the peasantry of
the district, and, what is more, by the present Pope him-.
self. It had the immediate effect of causing the infant
thus rescued to be devoted to the church, instead of the
profession of arms, for which he had previously been
designed, and for which all Italy at that moment panted;
and by those who are unable otherwise to account for
credulity so uncommon in our age, especially in one so
calm and sagacious as his present Holiness, it has been
considered the origin of that faith which Pius so lately
placed on the miraculous agency of the Polish abbess,
Notre Donna do la Scella being, by a singular coincid-
ence, the presiding saint of both."
The writer is evidently well acquainted with
Italian politics, and, although a great ad-
mirer of the Pope, he is by no means
blind to the short-comings of certainly " one
of the most amiable men that ever filled
the Pontifical throne." The following account of
the causes which led to the recent revolution at
Rome, and of the objects of those engaged in it, is,
we believe, more trustworthy than any of the nu-
merous accounts which have hitherto appeared from
the Jesuit and obscurantist Italian correspondents of
the daily papers:—
" Those unacquainted with the circumstances are apt
to attribute the Pope's recent unpopularity solely to the
proverbial vaccillation of the people's opinion; but the
fact is for the last six months Pius IX. has been pur-
suing a system of policy decidedly reactionary. He re-
tused his subjects a constitution in the first instance;
he withheld from them a popular administration in the
second. Ever since February last Rossi has been his
ruling star, and under this fatal ascendancy all his for-
mer popularity gave way. It was in vain that in April
last he dismissed the Jesuits. Father Roothman, with
the whole of the fraternity, was nominally expelled from
the Roman States, and it was even for a moment sup-
posed that the Fleming would be driven to the country
from which he sprang: Rossi, said to be a member of
the order, was surmised to maintain secret relations with
them; and the act was considered to be a temporary
concession to popular opinion rather than a renunciation
of Austrian policy,:with the latter of which the ci-devant
French Ambassador was now held to be completely
identified. Though the society was thus ordered to quit
the Roman States, and doomed to see its colleges sup-
pressed, its head-quarters taken up, and even Roothman
himself, with the whole of his staff marched out of the
capital, the movement inspired no confidence. Cardinal
Vizardelli, one of the most devoted adherents, was en-
trusted with the control of their vast funds; nominally
for the benefit of the State, but in secret, it was well
understood, for the exclusive advantage of the order.
" An event such as this—the suppression of a society
the most formidable perhaps which the world ever saw,
and which, in one manner or another has embroiled
Europe for centuries, would at any other period. have
excited a profound sensation, and perhaps have filled a
memorable space in the page of contemporanean his-
tory. But it may be considered as some proof of the ex-
traordinary magnitude of the scenes at present passing
under our eyes, that it produced not the slightest sensa-
tion on the Continent, and, indeed, but for the dissatis-
faction that subsequently arose, would have been almost
unknown to ninety-nine out of every hundred indivi-
duals in England. But the dissatisfaction arising out
of the impertect manner in which it was accomplished,
affords the true clue to most of the events that followed.
The Prince of Canino, long the deadly foe of the order,
immediately seized the opportunity for promoting his
own ambitious designs on the sovereignty of Rome, or at
least, the Presidency of a Roman Republic; and Maxzini
and others who viewed the institution with equal en-
mity, from feelings of greater disinterestedness, not only
denounced its partial suppression, but accused the Ponti-
fical Cabinet of still retaining secret relations with the
repudiated body, and eventually, on finding Rossi or
Pius persist in the policy, raised the cry of national in-
dependence. In their own emphatic words, boldly ut-
tered by the chief of them in this country six years ago,
• The Rome of the Cxsars had passed, the Rome of the
Popes was passing, and that of the Italian people was
now about to arise.' Those who a few years ago treated
this prophetic declaration with ridicule or scorn, as the
ebullition of a fierce enthusiast, may be surprised to find
how nearly it is on the point of being at present realised;
and assuredly they, who shortly afterwards laughed in
derision of the exiled Italian's complaint of the violation
of his letters by Sir James Graham, could not surmise
that he was to prove one of the principal instruments in
effecting the mighty change."
This is an excellent number of the Mirror.