Hard words break no bones, and the Vatican
cares little for what English papers say of it, and looks upon the
introduction of English Anti-Papal journals as part of the necessary
price to be paid for the residence of the wealthy heretics who refuse to
stop anywhere where they cannot have clubs and churches and papers of
their own. The expulsion of M. Gallenga, the _Times_ correspondent, was
in reality no exception to this policy. It was not as the correspondent
of an English newspaper, but as an ex-Mazzinian revolutionist and the
author of _Fra Dolcino_, that this gentleman was obnoxious to the Papal
authorities. Though a naturalized English subject, he had not ceased to
be an Italian, and his personal influence amongst Roman society might
have been considerable, though the effect of his English correspondence,
however able, would have been next to nothing.
From all these causes it is very hard to learn anything at Rome, and
harder yet to learn anything with accuracy. It is only by a process of
elimination you ever arrive at the truth. Out of a dozen stories and
reports you have to take one, or rather part of one, and to reject the
eleven and odd remaining. It has been my object, therefore, in the
following descriptions of the scenes which marked the period of my
residence in Rome, to give as much as possible of what I have known and
seen myself, and as little of what I heard and learnt from others.
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