nothing beyond what the priest tells them; even that he, the priest, can change a wafer into God, and, by giving it to people to eat, can save them from hell. This the Romans cannot believe; and therefore their creed is a negation. In the room of indifference, which could not be said to believe or disbelieve, because it never thought on the subject, has now come intense hatred of the Papacy, from the destruction of the nation's hopes under Pio Nono. He who seven years ago heard the streets of Rome echoing to the cry that she alone was La Regina delle Genti,—“ sat a queen, and should see no sorrow," -can best form an estimate of the terrible re-action that has followed the tumult of that hour, and can best understand how it has happened, that now the hatred wherewith the Italians hate the Papacy is greater than the love wherewith they loved it. Tradition, by its fooleries,-the mass, by its monstrosity, the priest, by his immoralities,—and, above all, the Pope, by his perfidy and tyranny,-have made the papal religion to stink in the nostrils of the great mass of the Roman people. You might as well look for religion in pandemonium itself, as in a country groaning under such a complication of vices and miseries. Nay, there is more faith in pandemonium than in Rome; for we are told that the devils believe and tremble ; but in Rome, generally speaking, there is faith in nothing. And for this fearful state of matters the Papacy, beyond all question, is responsible.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MENTAL STATE OF THE PRIESTHOOD IN ITALY.

First Impressions in Rome erroneous-The unseen Rome-Her devotement to one thing-In what light do the Priests in Italy regard their own System?-Can they possibly believe their Cheats to be Miracles? -A goodly number of the Priests Infidels-Others never thought on the subject-Some have strong Misgivings-Others convinced of the Falsehood of that Church, but lack Courage or Opportunity to leave itMaking Allowance for all these Classes, the Majority of Priests do believe in their System-The Explanation of this-The real Ruler in the Church of Rome, not the Pope, nor the Cardinals, nor the Jesuits, but the System-Human Machinery-The Pontiff-The College of Cardinals -Antonelli-The Bishops and Priests-The Jesuits-Their Activity and Importance at Rome-Their Appearance described.

WHEN an Englishman visits the Eternal City, he is very apt, during the first days of his sojourn, to underrate the power and influence of the Papal system. At home he has been used to see power associated with splendour, and surrounded with the fruits and monuments of intelligence. At Rome

everything on which he sets his eye bears marks of a growing barbarism and decay. Outside the walls of the city is a vast desert, attesting the utter extinction of industry. Within is an air of stagnation and idleness, which bespeaks the utter absence of all mental activity. A very considerable portion of

the population have no occupation but begging. The naked heads, necks, and feet of the monks and friars are offensive from want of cleanliness. The higher ecclesiastics even are coarse and vulgar men. The fine monuments reared by the taste and wealth of former ages want keeping. Their churches, despite the paintings and statuary with which they are filled, are rendered disagreeable by the beggars that haunt them, and the incense that is continually burned in them. Their very processions do not rise above a tawdry half-barbaric grandeur; and one must be far gone in the Puseyite malady before such exhibitions can inspire him with anything like reverence. The visitor looks around on this strange scene, so unlike what his imagination had pictured, and exclaims, "Where and in what lies the secret of this city's power? Here there is neither art, nor industry, nor wealth, nor knowledge! Here all the bodily and all the mental faculties of man appear to be folded up in a worse than mediæval stupor. Where are the elements of that power for which this city is renowned, and by which she is able to thwart and control the civilized and powerful Governments of the north of Europe? Would, says he to himself, that those who venerate Rome when divided from her by the Alps and the ocean, would come here and see with their own eyes her contemptible vileness and inconceivable degradation; and that those statesmen who are moved by a secret fear to bow the knee to her, would come hither and mark the baseness of her before whom they are content to lower the honour and independence of their country! Such, we say, are the first im

pressions of the visitor to Rome.

But a few days suffice to correct this erroneous estimate.

The person looks around him; he looks below him. discovers the real Rome. It is not the Rome that is

There he

-it

seen,

is the Rome that is unseen,-before which the nations tremble.

She sits in the midst

Beneath his feet are tremendous agencies at work. There are the pent-up fires that shake the globe. Rome, cut off from all the world, and surrounded by leagues of silent and blackened deserts, is the centre of energies that rest not day nor night, and the action of which is felt at the very extremities of the earth. It seems, indeed, as if Rome had been set free from all the anxieties and labours which occupy the minds and hands of the rest of the world, of very purpose that she might attend to only one thing. The labours of the husbandman and the artificer she has forborne. Like the lilies of the field, she toils not, neither does she spin. of her deserts, like the sorceress on the heath, or the conspirator in his den, hatching plots against the world. Rome is the pandemonium of the earth, and the Pope is the Lucifer of the world's drama. Fallen he is from the heaven of power and grandeur which he occupied in the twelfth century; and he and his compeers lie sunk in a very gulph of anarchy and barbarism. Lifting up his eyes, he beholds afar off the happy nations of Protestantism, reaping the reward of a free Bible and a free Government, in the riches of their commerce and the stability of their power. The sight is tormenting and intolerable, and the pontiff is stung thereby into ceaseless attempts to retrieve his fall. If he cannot mount to his old seat, and sit there once more in superhuman pride and unapproachable power above the bodies and the souls of men, he may at least hope to draw down those he so much envies into the same gulph with himself. Hence the villanies and plots of all kinds of which Rome is full, and which form a source of danger to the nations of Christendom, from which they may hope to be delivered only when the Papacy shall have been finally destroyed.

What I propose here is to sketch the mental state of the

priests of Italy, so far as my opportunities enabled me to judge. The subject is more recondite than the foregoing; the facts are less accessible; and my statements must partake more of the inferential than did those embraced in the former branches of the subject.

The first question that arises is, in what light do the priests in Italy regard their own system? Do they look upon it as an unrivalled compound of imposture and tyranny,-a cunning invention for procuring mitres, tiaras, purple robes, and other good things for themselves? or do they regard it as indeed founded in truth, and clothed with the sanction of heaven? They are behind the scenes, and have access to see and hear many things which are not meant for the eye and ear of the public. The man who pulls the strings of a winking Madonna can scarce persuade himself, one should think, that the movement that follows is the effect of supernatural power. The priest who liquefies the blood of St Januarius by the warmth of his hand or the warmth of the fire, must know that what he has performed is neither more nor less than a very ordinary juggle. The monk who falls a rummaging in the Catacombs, or in any of the old graveyards about Rome, and finds there a parcel of decayed bones, which he passes off as those of Saint Theodosia or Saint Anathanasius, but which are as likely to be the bones of an old pagan, or a Goth, or a brigand, can hardly believe, one should suppose, his own tale. If the Pope believes in his own relics, what conceptions must he have of Peter? What a strange configuration of body must he believe the apostle to have had! Peter must have been a man with some dozen of heads; with a score of arms, and a hundred fingers or so on each arm; in short, a perfect realization of the old pagan fable of the giant Briareus. The Pope must believe this, or he must believe that he gives his attestation to what is not