The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-31 00:00:00

STATE OF ITALY.

The correspondent of the Tinzes, in a letter dated
,rin, Oct. 28, says :—Father Pansaglia arrived in
grin last Saturday. I saw him this morning.
lie is a striking, highly interesting-looking per-
& nage. He is a tall man, considerably above six
fe it high, with great breadth of shoulders and
flat chest; a spare, erect, imposing figure, with
an easy, dignified, refined bearing ; the most gen-
tl tmanly priest I ever beheld. His forehead is
high, not massive, and rather slanting backwards;
ti e brow is sharp and prominent. He has a rich,
g:ossy heed of hair, slightly silvered all over; he
u. Ay be 50 years old, certainly not more, and he
eL mplains that deep study and care have oldened
h'm before his time. He has regular, deeply-
eliselled features, with a remarkably wide, proud,
fi .m, but by no means heavy under jaw. The eyes
e deeply set, light brown, vivid, wakeful. The
untenance is gifted with great mobility and sud-
s) If powers of expression. He is thin and pale, with
deep farrows on the forehead and round the mouth.
he habitual look is grave and thoughtful ; but the
lice lightens up with occasional glimpses of great
s'lrewdnees and humour. He is a Florentine,
1 believe, or, at any rate, a Tuscan. His
1 Lnguage is pure, precise, flowing, elegant,
and his native accent has been softened
end founded without effeminacy by long re-
sidence in Rome. Altogetber, I felt I stood in
intelligence. the presence of a high The Father is
a hove all things a thinker ; not much of an enthu-
t last, I should fancy, and the very reverse of a
fanatic. There is a slight touch of the Jesuit in the
tone of his voice, in his thorough courtesy, and
bland, well-bred manners ; but there is also a
strength of character by which the man of the world
-visibly effaces and makes us forget the priest. He
professes great earnestness of purpose, nevertheless ;
professes to have a heart for his country, while his
whole soal is engrossed with the real interests of the
Church. He wishes the Papacy to be truly Catholic ;
hence he wishes it to abjure all that made it essen-
tially Italian. The Pope's character as a Roman
prince has wedded him to a narrow-minded local
policy, estrangel him from his world-wide mission,
and limited the sphere of his humanitarian in-
fluence. Passaglia has no faith in Cardinals D'An-
drea or Marini, in none of the Italian members of
the Sacred College. The only Prelate who shared
his own views, and would have acted in concert
-with him, is now dead; it was Cardinal Santucci.
Ilut he has allies in some of the Transalpine Cardi-
nals ; he named three of them—the Primate of Hun-
gary, he of Lisbon, I forget the. third. Many of
the clergy of the second runk, even in Rome, are of
one mind with him. They are now daily speaking
nut, and will be sent out one by one to join him in
his exile. Few days will elapse ere a nucleus of
these liberal-minded ecclesiastics will be assembled
in Turin. Many of the distinguished laymen whose
attachment to the Roman Catholic Church no one
can dispute—foremost among them the excellent
Marquis of Cavour, the late Count's elder brother
—will rally around them. The King's Govern-
ment will find it their interest to encourage their
efforts. The. moment is supreme; it could not be
more opportune. It is now very clearly stated
that " the Emperor of the French, for weighty and
mighty motives of his own, in the interest of the
Italian cause itself, will not allow that terrible ques-
tion of Rome to be touched upon." I thank my
stars I never gave in to the almost universal delu-
sion about the Emperor's good intentions on that
subject. Napoleon's weighty reasons for not with-
drawing his troops from Rome are, and always were,
purely personal. Rome was an instrument in his
hands for thwarting the efforts of the Italians to-
wards their unity, for opposing that unity for ever,
or at least adjourning it till the Italians have either
aecepted his conditions or made themselves subser-
vient to sore of his hidden views. In the teeth of
statesmen, newsmen, diplomatists, and reasoners of
every description who had different expectations,
who named the close of last February, of last March,
of every month of the calendar, as the epoch deter-
mined upon for the removal of the Roman gar-
rison, and who looked upon me as a maniac for my
incredulity, I adhered to my own faith, and it is
now only a meagre consolation to be told that I was
right all along,

The Italians cannot talk and write themselves
into Rome; they cannot fight themselves into it;
we must now see whether they can baffle the Em-
peror and rout the Pope, notwithstanding. Father
I'assaglia is in himself a host. Though he talks of
weariness and disgust; though he even reveals some
intentions of withdrawing from the contest, and
" looking for some obscure corner where he can pore
over his books and say a quiet mass ;" though he
has some vague designs of crossing the Alps, and
earning his broad in Germany, were it only as a
philosophical lecturer, turning to account those
studies which have been his delight—still one may
doubt whether he is the man to lay hand on the
plough and look backward. He must know that the
eyes of his country, and one may freely say of all
Europe, are upon him; and all his outward man
would belie him if he were to give up a game with
such promising odds on his side.

The ovations he received at Siena and Florence
have chagrined and sickened him. He is no man
for the clamour of a riotous multitude ; something
wide apart from the Reformers of the Gavazzi and
Pantaleo school. Though doubtless an eloquent
man, he would rather trust his powers as a writer.
He comes not to demolish, but to build. His appeal
must be, not to the passions of the rabble, but to
the understanding of thinking men, and especially
to the conscience, and the true interests of his
clerical brethren; The Papacy must fall, but the
Church must stand ; nay, it must be more strongly
united than it ever was ; the world must see that
the only element of division and weakness in the
Church was the Papacy—the institution of a Pope-
King. The means for this momentous movement
are at hand. Lorenzo Valerio, formerly one of the
Parliamentary leaders of the Left, since 1859 Gover-
nor of the province of Como, for some time Royal
Lieutenant in the Marches, and now again at the
head of the province of Como, assures us that the
diocess of Como, from the bishop to the meanest
clerk, are stanchly and ardently attached to the
Italian cause, and freely organised into hostility
against the temporal power of the Roman Court.
Symptoms of the same good disposition are rife in
the diocess of Cremona, the bishop at the head of
which was decided and outspoken from the begin-
ning. Throughout the whole of Lombardy the
priests are orderly and reasonable, and those prelates
who showed any to the country's cause, as
well as the Vicars who took their places, have been
driven from their sees, more frequently by the atti-
tude of their
Clergy than by the outcry and violence
of the lay Rock,
No one has forgotten that in early
times and throt?
litont the middle ages the archdiocess
of Milan, or, a
as called, the diocess of Italy,
was not only independent and at variance with,
hut often in a state of opeA
ofb.ostility to the See of
Rome. A certain amount
less than greater self-respect ualnadeVimenoaraelnittys,pwiraits, naot
Bishops
all times observable in Lonahl,dy,
1 especially among
the parochial clergy. Were the of Como or
Cremona, or the Chapters of Milan, t
Brescia to call together their provincial erganlo, or
sYnods 'i and
eventually to meet in a regional synod, to register
their protest against the continuance of the temporal
sovereignty of the Pontiff, as opposed to the nature
and tendencies of Christianity, as chargeable with
most, if not all, the disorders which ever afflicted
or now afflict the Church, and fatal to, and incom-
patible with the interests of true religion for the
future ; were, at the same time, the theological
faculties of the several Italian universities and
divinity schools to come to the same conclusions—
what. one may ask, would be the result ? Why, the
example of one, two, three dioceses would soon
prove contagious, and the Papacy
would lose ground
everywhere in Italy, till it would be hemmed in
within the narrow limits of the territory in which
French bayonets still uphold it. Against a perfect
accord and unanimity among the clergy, such as we
are told exists at Como and Cremona, it would not
easy for the Pope to invoke the aid of the
201"(10,000 of Catholics on whom he pretends to
re.Y. Those 200,0
field to
Win
h,u00,000 have not yet taken the
likely
back his lost provinces. They
Would not be
among tilt, frelelki J. to draw the sword to enforce
tt "111e4 Italians A creed which -