ITALY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume VII, Issue 344, 5 March 1859, Page 1 (Supplement)

IT A L Y.

The question of the French occupation of the Papal States stands, accoidmg to a coirespondent of the Times, pretty much as follows:— The Papal government, that is to say, the Pope and Cardinal Antonelli, would like to get rid of their allies. They are of opinion that they could get on very well without French bayonets, and keep the peace with their own resources. In th is belief it is thought they are quite mistaken. Persons^well able to form a just appreciation of the situation believe that dis . turbances would quickly follow the withdrawal of the Fiench troops. Of these there are now about 5000 in the Papal States, including, of couise, those in this city. Were they to leave, the Swiss (of whom there are barely 4000) would be all the government could depend upon and they would not suffice. As to the Roman troops, no reliance could be placed upon them, and they would be much more likely to join a revolution than to co-operate in its suppression. The Roman army numbers about 10,000 men. All these points considered, it is pictty evident that the French cannot yet be dispensed with without danger to the existing order of things. Then numbers are more likely to be increased than diminished. They are working at a fortification or line of enceinte at Civita Vecchia. This, although nominally for Custom-house objects, will serve for an entrenched camp. Some say that, when this is completed, as well as the railway between Rome and Civita, it will be occupied by 3000 French tioops, and that the remainder will evacuate the Papal States. The Austrians, by a conesponding movement, will quit Bologna and retire to Ancona. It is stated that all the poueis, " even Austria," have united in pressing the Pope to surrender the kidnapped child, Mortara, but that he lias rephtd to one and all that he is unable to do so, because it is connected with a sacrament.

A letter from Naples diaws a horrible picture of the fate reserved for Baron Nicoteia : — " The king," says the writer, " spared the life of Nicoteia for no other purpose than to make him die by degrees .1 terrible death. The executionci would lu\e taken him fiom suffering in a moment, but he would ha\e rescued him too rapidly iiom his ieiocious talons; he wished to feed upon his agon'us, and appointed him as the victim of a slow and feaiful death. At first, instead of imprisoning him in the Ergastolo of San Stefano, whither the law consigned him, he shut him up in the worst dungeon of the Vicarial at Naples ; afterwards lie threw him into the abysses of the fearful Colombaja of Trapani ; and lately — that is to say, at the beginning of October— he shut him up in the sepulchral caverns of Favignana. But in describing that den my hand becomes paralysed, and tenor takes complete possession of me ; )et to the best of my power I will describe it. In past times that fort was resencd as a place of confinement for prisoners of state, but out of respect to advancing civilisation it was closed. Now again it has been opened, and there is buried a noble living

being, capable of every self-sacrifice, every self-de-nial, whose only fault is that of having loved his country and having offered himself up for its redemption. In one part of the fort, called the Fossa, just over the gate, may be read this legend, ' Si entr.i >ivo, esi esce inorto.' 'One enters it living and leaves it dead.' Four hundred steps lead from the top of the mountain down to below the Wei of the sea — to the infernal cavern where lives the unfortunate Nicotera, guarded at night by two sentinels, without being able to see the sky, and scarcely to breathe the scanty air which passes in by the holes through which struggles in a dim light. That it is damp cannot be doubted, from its being in the very bowels of the earth, and from the fact that the very clothes of the prisoner become almost rotten in a few days."