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224.

The government of King Bomba had been guilty of many
arbitrary and despotic measures towards his own subjects
which had excited the indignation of the outside world, and,
during that year, 1856, a joint note of protest was sent by
France and England, and possibly Sardinia. Ferdinand II
was a typical Bourbon, and incapable of realizing that times
had changed since the family had first commenced to reign,
so that the note simply produced the reply that what he was
doing in his own kingdom was no one’s business except his own. A few years
afterwards, therefore, when at his death there was a revolution
which drove his son from the throne, he the son was left by everyone
to fight his own battles, and found no ally to send him assistance.

The Emperor Nicholas of Russia had extended sympathy to
Bomba at times, as being a little king of the autocratic kind.
He was too far away though to do much for him, and died some
years before Bomba. As an evidence of his affection he had
presented him with a couple of colossal bronze horses in spi-
rited attitudes which ornamented one of the entrances to the gardens
of the palace. Nicholas had also made a similar present to the
then King of Prussia, an elder brother of the 1st Emperor of Germany,
who was also autocratic in his tastes, and consequently after,
the Russian emperor’s heart. These were placed immediately in
front of the great palace at Berlin on each side of the main en-
trance. Each animal was in a rearing attitude and held back
by an attendant - the two groups being very fine. I never
heard at Naples of any witticisms suggested by their presence
there, but at Berlin they were styled “Progress retarded and
Retrogression encouraged”.

My friend Jos Blyth Allston who had been at Naples before
I arrived, left a note at the hotel saying that he awaited me
in Rome, and I consequently started on Saturday morning in
the coupe of a diligence for the papal capital. There was only
one other inmate of the compartment, and after some intimacy
had sprung up between us, and towards the close of the day, he
advised me to place my gold pieces in the cloth lining below
the glasses, as there was a possibility of our being stopped by
robbers during the night. This I did, but we were not interferred
with; and I replaced them in my porte-monnaie at day break
the next morning. The diligence had been robbed some weeks
before, and as a precaution we were followed by two mounted
gens d’armes upon arriving at the papal frontier. My fellow
traveller was cautious how he spoke to me about the state of things in
the kingdom of the two Sicilies until I had told him that I was an Ameri-
can, and then his denunciation of Bomba and his ways was without
reserve.

Soon after sunrize as the diligence was making a gradual descent
into a level plain where was a city, having in its midst a church
with a dome, the size of which did not seem unusually great, I

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