white as millers. Still carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colors on colors, crowds on crowds, without end. Men and boys clinging to the wheels of coaches, and holding on behind, and following in their wake, and diving in among the horses' feet, to pick up scattered flowers to sell again; maskers on foot, in fantastic exaggeration of court dresses, surveying the throng through enormous eye-glasses, and always transported with an ecstasy of love on the discovery of any particular old lady at a window; long strings of policinelli, laying about them with blown bladders at the ends of sticks; a wagon full of madmen, screaming and tearing to the life; a coach full of grave Mamelukes, with their horse-tail standard set up in the midst; a party of gypsy women, engaged in terrific conflict with a ship full of sailors; a man-monkey on a pole, surrounded by strange animals with pigs' faces and lions' tails, carried under their arms, or worn gracefully over their shoulders; carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colors on colors, crowds on crowds, without end. Not many actual characters sustained or represented, perhaps, considering the number dressed, but the main pleasure of the scene consisting in its perfect good temper, in its bright, and infinite, and flashing variety, and in its entire abandonment, so perfect, so contagious, so irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights up to his middle in flowers and sugar plums like the wildest Roman of them all, and thinks of nothing else until night, when he is reminded that this is not the whole business of his existence."

At nightfall, the military clear the streets, and a race commences. Several horses, painted, numbered, and gayly adorned, but without riders, are let loose in the Corso, and dash along beneath the people, who gaze

down from every window and roof top with shouts and mirth. This senseless race is soon over; the horses plunge through the silk which is hung across the street to show where terminates the course; and a new scene commences. Carriages again fill the Corso, crowded with beauty and life. Each person has a lamp, and the frolic consists in blowing out each one the lamp of his eighbor, and keeping his own burning. The Corso becomes a cloud of fire, which shines out from many a torch and lantern. Red, green, blue, and many a gay color flashes on the sight, until the whole scene becomes one of bewildering beauty. We will trust to the same pen for a description of this brilliant scene.

"The spectacle at this time is one of the most extraordinary that can be imagined. Carriages coming slowly by, with every body standing on the seat or on the box, holding up their lights at arm's length, for greater safety; some in paper shades; some with a bunch of undefended little tapers, kindled together; some with blazing torches; some with feeble little candles; men on foot, creeping along among the wheels, watching their opportunity to make a spring at some particular light, and dash it out; other people climbing up into carriages, to get hold of them by main force; others chasing some unlucky wanderer round and round his own coach, to blow out the light he has begged or stolen somewhere, before he can ascend to his own company; others, with their hats off at a carriage door, humbly beseeching some kind lady to oblige them with a light for a cigar, and, when she is in the fullness of doubt whether to comply or not, blowing out the candle she is guarding so tenderly with her little hand; other people, at windows, fishing for candles with lines and hooks, or letting down long willow

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wands, with handkerchiefs at the end, and flapping them out when the bearer is at the hight of his triumph; others hiding all their time in corners, with immense extinguishers, like halberds, and suddenly coming down upon glorious torches; others gathering round one coach, and sticking to it; others raining oranges and nosegays at an obdurate little lantern, or regularly storming a pyramid of men, holding up one man among them, who carries one feeble little wick above his head, with which he defies them all; beautiful women, standing up in coaches, pointing in derision at extinguished lights, and clapping their hands as they pass on; low balconies full of lovely faces and gay dresses, struggling with assailants in the street, some repressing them as they climb up, some bending down, some leaning over, some shrinking back; delicate arms and bosoms, graceful figures, gleaming lights, fluttering dresses; when, in the enthusiasm of the scene, and the fullest ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, and the carnival is over in an instant-put out like a taper with a breath."

The carnival closes, and Rome settles down into a quiet state, and, instead of the Corso filled with a glad crowd of beautiful women and cheerful men, beggars, by legions, roam along the same way, cursing their very existence, and denouncing the cardinals as the authors of their misery. During the carnival, Rome is a sort of paradise-a heaven of gay pleasures; but when the carnival closes, hell begins, and the poor stricken objects of want and commiseration groan over their sufferings, and wring their hands in anguish. These festivals are held to cover up the wretchedness of the masses; but they cannot do it. They are the gossamer robes of pleasure, beneath which vice, crime, and wo appear uncovered and undisguised.

XXXI.

PIUS IX. AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

ON the morning of the 1st of June, 1846, an old man died in the Quirinal palace. As soon as the event was known, one of the cardinals, Camerlinque, repaired to the palace, and went through the usual formality of striking three blows on the forehead of the dead man, and announcing officially to the people of Rome that "papa was surely dead." That old man was Mauri Capellari, on whose head the triple crown had been placed, and who had adopted the title of Gregory XVI. His death was not regarded as a great calamity. The character of the pope was such, that there was more joy than sorrow in Rome, when the tidings of his death were published around. His habits were loose in the extreme; and the well-known fact that on his elevation to the throne he fitted up splendid apartments in the Vatican for Cajetanina, the wife of an obscure barber, and her family, drew upon him the contempt of all decent people in the city. This barber and wife acquired so much influence over the old man, that they became the head of the state, and ruled the empire. That he was a man of notoriously intemperate habits was known in his lifetime to all Rome, and when he died few tears were shed for him, except by the wife of his friend the barber. So little was he respected, that ere his clay was cold, or the worms had time to perform their work, the people set themselves to getting up

caricatures of the man, setting off his well-known vices, and his incorrigible hatred to progress, and hold ing him up to the ridicule of his subjects and followers. Two of these are amusing enough for us to mention The first represents the deceased pope knocking for admittance at the gates of Paradise.

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“Who wishes to enter?" asks St. Peter.

Gregory, your successor at Rome."

"But," replies St. Peter, "Gregory the Great died and came here a long time ago. Who are you that have taken his name?"

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Why, they called me at Rome Gregory Bevone,” Gregory the Tippler.)

“O, I have heard of you; come in."

The second is designed to take off the pope's objections to railroads and other improvements, and represents Gregory and St. Peter going together to Paradise. The journey being hard and tedious for an aged man, he complains to St. Peter thus:

"How is it, St. Peter, that our journey is so long? I did not know that Paradise was so far from the Vatican."

St. Peter replies, "If you had allowed the construction of railways and steamers in your states, we should have arrived long ago; but now you must stop for a while in Purgatory."

After remaining some months in Purgatory, where, as the story goes,) he met his friend Daniel O'Connell, Gregory set out with St. Peter again on his eternal journey. Coming in view of Paradise, the pope asks St. Peter, "why the angels, and his last predecessors in the papal chair, did not come out to meet him."

1 These pasquinades are given on the authority of Rev. John Dowling D. D., History of Romanism, p. 653.