Stak — The refusal of the EmperorNapoleon to end the Roman question
this year seems to have inspired the Italian people with a determination to get rid of the Papacy by other means, i.e. by a schism in the Church. The Italian Church must declare itself independent of the Pope. The means, it is said, for such a movement, are at hand. In the diocese of Como, the whole body of the clergy are Italian in feeling. In Cremona, the bishop, and many of his clergy, are opposed to the Papacy. In Lombardy, all prelates hostile to the people have been driven out. It is believed that a synodal vote against the Papal power in these dioceses, followed by another from the universities, would be obeyed throughout Italy, where the majority of the clergy, it is affirmed, would continue to conduct services even if the Pope excommunicated them. A proposal of this kind will probably be submitted to the Italian Parliament, and find favour even in Naples, where preachers hold forth publicly against the temporal power. A great stream of emigrants is pouring from Genoa to Buenos Ayres. The Ligurians have been harassed by a succession of bad vintages, and they prosper well in South America, where they become successful traders, politicians, and even leaders of armies. They suit the Spanish population, who yield to them more readily than to English or French men.
The Turin correspondent of the Times furnishes some information on Italian wines. He says ordinary Italian wine, if carefully pre- pared, will keep, while the delicious wine of Asti is only lfr. a bottle, and there are some ten or twelve sorts of really fine Italian wine. " Try to have some of the old cobweb-clad flasks and bottles of some well-furnished private cellar in Turin, or, better, in the country; ask for some relics of the wines that used to be gathered on the hills of the Canarese in the good old times—that is, before the disease set in; ask for some first-rate Campiglione, from the province of Pinerolo, for some of the best Carema, growing at the entrance of Val d'Aosta, or some of the Chatillon, Verrex, St. Vin- cent, from the interior of that delightful valley; send for some spe- cimens of Gattinara Amaro Vecchione, or of Barolo, Nebbiolo, Gri- gnolino (the wine that causes the exiled Archbishop of Turin, Mon- signor Transoni, such pangs of home-sickness) ; finally, get. some of the.genuine old bitter Barbera of Asti, and when you have tried them, you will be able to decide whether Burgundy or Gascony can boast a greater variety of .generous wines than nature bestows upon Piedmont." The great difficulty in the way of a wine trade with England is the want of rapid and punctual communication, the steamers which run between London and Leghorn being always irre- gular. The Emilian Railway is to be opened this month, and the direct route to London will then be vid France and Turin to Ancona, and so on to Corfu and Alexandria; but there is no line of steamers between Ancona and Corfu, where the service is taken up by the Austrian Lloyd's.