The sixtieth anniversary of the breach of Porta Pia through which the Italian army, under Victor Emmanuel, King of Piedmont, entered Rome on September 20th, 1870, sees at long last some fulfilment of the prayer with which the noble President of Ecuador, Gabriel Garcia Moreno, terminated the official protest of his government and himself at this final outrage to the Holy See. The whole Catholic world had seen with consternation and amazement the invasion of the last strip of Papal territory by the King of Piedmont and Sardinia in spite of his protestations of loyalty to the Sovereign Pontiff, in spite of his formal assurance to the French Emperor who, involved in the conflict with Prussia, had been obliged a month previously to withdraw his garrison from Rome. But even then Christendom was hardly prepared for the climax; the seizure of the Capital itself, and the virtual incarceration in the Vatican of the saintly and beloved Pontiff, Pius IX. The Chancelleries of Europe, indeed of the entire world, had nevertheless remained dumb in face of this flagrant injustice, contenting themselves with filing in their archives the formal remonstrances of the Holy See. Earlier in 1848 the voice of Pius IX in exile at Gaeta had evoked the assistance of Austria, of France, of Spain, but now Isabella Segunda was dethroned and in exile, Napoleon about to surrender to Prussia, Austria still quivering under the recent defeat of its armies and no other Power able, or at any rate willing, to defy the ‘Brigand of Savoy.’