DRAWING TO A CLOSE. A.D

Victor Emmanuel had been now seven years reigning în Rome, and notwithstanding the difficult relations between Church and State, and other trials which the young nation had to struggle sigainst, public affairs had gone on with wonderful order and tranquillity. The heads of the Church and State reigned in their respective palaces of the Vatican and the Quirinal, each living in his World apart, as if they had been in different hemispheres.

Pius IX., after an unusually stirring, eventful career, for a churchman, had sunk into political insignificance, and the world heard little of him, if we except the small commotion caused by an occasional flock of pilgrims in the Etemal City, or the réception of a number of foreign visitors desirous of seeing with their own eyes that most interesting personage called the Prisoner of the Vatican. The Holy Father received these visitors benignly, talked pleasantly with them, gave them his bénédiction, and his small white hand to kiss.

Hundreds of anecdotes were afloat as to how serenely — nay gaily — the good old man bore his imprisonment ;