He
owned the generosity of the king's behavior and his claim upon popular
acknowledgment, but he said that he had taught the young men of his
party the duty of ignoring the monarchy, and he could not go counter to
the doctrine he had preached.
If I venture to speak now of a very extraordinary trait of the municipal
situation at Rome, it must be without the least pretence to authority or
to more than such superficial knowledge as the most incurious visitor to
Rome can hardly help having. In the capital of Christendom, where the
head of the Church dwells in a tradition of supremacy hardly less
Italian than Christian, the syndic, or mayor, is a Jew, and not merely a
Jew, but an alien Jew, English by birth and education, a Londoner and an
Oxford man. More yet, he is a Freemason, which in Italy means things
anathema to the Church, and he is a very prominent Freemason. With
reference to the State, his official existence, though not inimical, is
through the fusion of the political parties which elected him hardly
less anomalous.
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