Words are
insufficient to express the enthusiastic affection, the joyous
demonstrations, which, for the length of three miles from St Agnese to
the Quirinal, were manifested towards him by the good people of this
Sovereign City, who had crowded to behold his passage; and who, by any
means in their power, expressed the tender affection which they could not
but entertain for his sacred person. Infinite, too, was the number of
carriages which followed the Royal cortege to the Pontifical palace of St
Peter's."
To this I can only say, that many things are visible to the eye of faith,
and hidden to the common world. To my unenlightened vision, the crowd of
three miles in length was composed of a thousand persons in all; and the
infinite number of carriages looked uncommonly like sixty.
And now for the converse picture.
The "Promised Land."
Out of chill clouds and dull gloom, I passed into summer sunshine. Across
barren moor-land and more barren mountains, by the side of marshy lakes,
deserted and malaria-haunted, through squalid villages and decayed
cities, my journey brought me into a rich garden-country, studded with
thriving towns swarming with life, and watered with endless streams. I
came into a land such as children of Israel never looked upon from over
Jordan, after their weary wanderings in the wilderness; a land rich in
oil and corn, and vineyards and cattle; a very "land of promise.
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