Alpha Book

But his position was a
hard one. He regretted the apparent necessity, and to the day of his
death he never would sleep under the roof of Pius the Ninth's Palace on
the Quirinal, but had his private apartments in an adjoining building.
He was brave and generous. Such faults as he had were no burden to the
nation and concerned himself alone. The same praise may be worthily
bestowed upon his successor, but the personal influence is no longer the
same, any more than that of Leo XIII. can be compared with that of Pius
IX., though all the world is aware of the present Pope's intellectual
superiority and lofty moral principle.
Let us try to be just. The unification of Italy has been the result of a
noble conception. The execution of the scheme has not been without
faults, and some of these faults have brought about deplorable, even
disastrous, consequences, such as to endanger the stability of the new
order. The worst of these attendant errors has been the sudden
imposition of a most superficial and vicious culture, under the name of
enlightenment and education.


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