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FOOTNOTES:

[61] Aktenstücke, pp. 257–67.

[62] Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, vol. iv.

[63] Ce qui se Passe au Concile, p. 16.

[64] Serie VI. vol. x. p. 384.

CHAPTER XI

Great Gathering in Rome, June 1867—Impressions and Anticipations—Improvements in the City—Louis Veuillot on the Great Future.

The whole earth had been moved in the hope of not only exhibiting a pageant outshining former ones, but also of carrying the dogma of Papal infallibility by an ecclesiastical coup d'état, or, as it is called, by acclamation, without the delays of a discussion.[65] Had this been accomplished, the legislative form of a General Council would have been rendered futile for the time to come, or at the most, would have been but a grander method of working the institution of "consultative despotism," to adopt the strict definition of Montalembert. The invitation had been enthusiastically responded to. The spectacle of the Papacy menaced with the loss of Rome was touching, and the belief was cherished that a great demonstration of the interest felt by the Catholic world on its behalf would contribute to ward off the peril. Besides these motives, another in full activity was the ever powerful one, especially powerful with Romanists, the desire to see a pageant; and this sight was to surpass all the former displays of Rome.

The city put on its best, the churches were newly embellished, the streets decked in festive array. Bishops came from all the ends of the earth, till the thoroughfares were mottled with the toilets of five hundred. Priests crowded in till, it is said, twelve thousand breathed the sacred air of the city, every one of them proud to tread that spot of our unruly earth, where the priest was king of men.

Besides the clergy, came such multitudes of pilgrims that, according to Cecconi, the population of the city was almost doubled. The Romans saw their familiar rite, the worship of the statue of St. Peter—l'adorazione della statua di San Pietro—performed on a prodigious scale. In modern as in ancient Rome, adoration has its degrees; all worship does not imply the ascription of supreme, but only of celestial, honours. No Pontiff in the days of the Republic ever pretended that Quirinus was creator of the world and father of eternity. He was the protecting divinity of Rome, but with very limited powers in comparison with Peter, carrying no sceptre equal to the keys.

Such of the visitors as had seen the city in former times, if not too much pre-occupied with the sanctity of the place to observe such matters, would find several improvements. Side pavements had been allowed in the main streets. Gaslight had, after long and painful efforts, been admitted.

Railways had entered the walls. The personal liberality of the Pope had effected several improvements, both in public works and charitable institutions. The French had done a great deal for the cleansing of the streets, although the filth of some of them, and the indecency of some of the bye ones, were still beyond belief to any one from England. The Pope's army, which as late as 1860 was an odd-looking array, was now a sightly and active force, composed mainly of foreigners, in large part French. And, finally, it had become possible to tell the time of day.

Formerly, midday had been one of the mysteries of Rome. It seemed as if the right of private judgment, banished from the churches, had taken refuge in the steeples, for each particular clock went off at some mysterious impulse, and struck twelve at the noon of its own. Thus for good part of an hour, they do say often longer, the air continued thrilling with the tidings that it was just noon of day. Naughty Romans ascribe the change to General Baraguay d'Hilliers, while in command of the French garrison. Having vainly endeavoured to get a standard of time established, he presumed, with French audacity, to carry the case by appeal from the sacristy to the sun. Placing a gun on Fort St. Angelo, with a burning-glass upon it, he stole the tidings from another world which were not to be got from the temples at hand.[66]

One of the most powerful of the pilgrims was M. Louis Veuillot, who as editor of the Univers had for very many years done much to second in literature the work done in schools, of reviving antipathies and superstitions which were in danger of dying out in France. His notes of this visit form part of his two octavos. As soon as he reaches the foot of the Alps, at Susa, he begins to scold Italy and the Italians, takes every opportunity of doing so, and goes out of the country scolding worse than when he came in.

But if Italy and the Italians were exceedingly evil in the eyes of M. Veuillot, he found compensation in the perfect loveliness of Rome and the Romans. The very cabmen are loudly praised, and the cabs carry "ideas;" the Press, especially the Civiltá, is of course far above the French level. But the Pope was the grandest spectacle of all. As he entered the Basilica, preceded by a train of five hundred prelates, it made an impression of power greater than if four millions of men had defiled past, armed with the most perfect artillery.[67]

Naturally, however, the imagination of M. Veuillot was most fired with the prospect of that historical future which was about to open on the human species. Darkness still covers the chaos after the cataclysm, but the breaking of the light draws nigh. The news of a projected Council has reached the ears of M. Veuillot. His first word is, "Rome is officially taking the reins of the world into her hand." Other expressions scattered up and down his animated pages are as follows—

The day that the Council is convoked the counter-revolution will commence. … Pius IX will open his mouth, and the great word, Let there be light, will proceed out of his lips. … It will be a solemn date in history; it will witness the laying of the immovable stone of Re-construction. … At the voice of the Pontiff the bowels of the earth will be moved, to give birth to the new civilization of the Cross. … Here is the great reservoir whence the future will pour out and overflow the human race. … These days in Rome are a revelation of the state of the world, and the starting point of a renovation. … The pilgrimage of Catholic Europe to Rome in 1867 will have consequences of which the Moniteur [alluding to remarks in that journal] will be informed hereafter, and of which the world will become aware when the Moniteur would wish them to be unheard of. … For centuries Rome has not seen the Pope in such splendour, nor has he so manifestly appeared in his character as head of the human race.

M. Veuillot is of course one of those who look on the modern liberty of the press as a great curse. We may insert here what came to hand long after these pages were written, as an illustration of the kind of Press that is to be quenched. The Times of January 26, 1876, in the letter of its Paris correspondent, gives a morsel from the Univers, in the style of M. Veuillot. The Times had said something about an interview of the Marquis of Ripon, as a new convert, with the Pope. The Univers devotes to that article "a column and a half of invectives," and thus winds up: "The Times is now the giant of the Press, and prospers in both hemispheres. But the day will come when the two worlds will want no more of its agony column, or of its bad literature; and its last compositor, inactive before his immense poison machine, suddenly idle, will wait in vain for copy which will never come." Will the compositor look out of the top window in Queen Victoria Street to see if Macaulay's New Zealander has arrived on London Bridge?

FOOTNOTES:

[65] Acton, Zur. Ges., p. 14.

[66] This was first told me by a Roman tradesman, in presence, among others, of a very good-natured canon, who joined in the general laugh at my innocent surprise. This year (1875) an ex-officer of the Pope's service added, "Ay, but the priests bribed the artillerymen to steal half the charge of powder, and to turn the gun toward the Campagna, so that the report should scarcely be heard." Probably the last statement is a mere rumour, not representing any actual transaction, but indicating, really enough, the state of mind of the people as to what their masters were likely to do. I have heard it said that Sir James Hudson used to declare that when first appointed to Turin he could walk all round the city while it struck twelve o'clock.

[67] Rome pendant le Concile, vol. i. p. 35.

CHAPTER XII

The Political Lesson of the Gathering, namely, All are called upon to recognize in the Papal States the Model State of the World—Survey of those States.

"Opportuneness of the Centenary of St. Peter for reviving the True Idea of the Political Order among States," is the heading of an article in the Civiltá Cattolica for 1867. The first words are, "He who comes to Rome finds St. Peter become a king"; a proposition of which we should modify the predicate, saying, He who comes to Rome finds a king, professing to be St. Peter. "He (i.e. Peter) has joined the tiara of the Pontiff to the crown of the Prince." Why did not the writer say the "tiara of the Apostle"? That would be too great an offence against antiquity. It is the tiara of the Pontiff, as if Peter had taken over that office from Nero.

However, these are but the introductory notes. The writer proceeds to expound the political effects of baptism. Christianity has not changed the civil power as to its substance, but as to its relations, by making a change in the subject of power. That subject is no longer mere man, but man made Christian by baptism. This doctrine—which frequently reappears as the theological basis of reconstruction—is more fully stated by M. Veuillot: "They will not deny that the true human race is baptized humanity. … It is, then, baptism which constitutes humanity, and all that has not been introduced into the Church by baptism is, in reality, only a sort of raw material, which as yet awaits the breath of life" (p. cxii.). In order to prevent any conflict between baptized man and the law of the Church, the civil power must be subject to the Church. Suarez is quoted to the effect that as a man would not be rightly constituted unless the body were subject to the soul, neither would the Church be rightly established unless the temporal power were subject to the spiritual. And hence, the political conclusion is firmly drawn: "The idea of such a subordination is realized in the pontifical government. Because, owing to the peculiar character of him who here holds the temporal power, it cannot rebel against the spiritual power, civil law can never here set itself against evangelical law, nor is any political act possible which should offend against morals."

The last affirmation will appear boldest to those who best know what political acts have been done in the Roman States, and in the present reign. No one of these acts could offend against Christian morals! for the all-sufficing reason that Peter had become the king, and Peter does no wrong. Thus we find infallibility, as received in the court creed, covering measures of taxation and police, as well as lotteries and monopolies—an abuse of the doctrine made still more obvious by what follows, in which the infallibility of the Government is grounded on its immaculate conception, and consequently perfect nature. Since in the Pontifical States "the laws must be sanctioned by him who holds the place of God on earth, him whom God has given to us for guide and teacher, they can never be in conflict with the divine will.[68] The infallible Depositary of evangelical interests can never sacrifice them to earthly ones. Though in such a government the two powers [spiritual and temporal] are distinct in form, they are in complete harmony and duly co-ordinated one with the other, presenting to lay States the perfect example of the Christian civil power."

It is granted that lay States can never equal this example, but they ought to imitate it. By their very conception they can never be free from the original taint, owing to which it becomes possible for "the temporal power to rebel against the spiritual power." Not only is it possible, but, by their nature, they are predisposed to that sin of sins. But all rulers of lay States are to know that in becoming subjects of the Church the subjects of civil power have been changed, though the substance of civil power has not been changed. We do not stay to inquire what may be the substance of civil power, after its subjects have been lifted above obedience to it by another human power, higher than itself in all things wherein the two may come into collision.

In conclusion, the faithful are told that the centenary of St. Peter, by bringing together people from all parts of the world, will give to them the opportunity of beholding "a State in which peace, morality, and justice reign. It is like an oasis amid the desolation of the desert; and it is so because the political order is in full harmony with evangelical law."

The approaching pilgrims, in comparing the oasis into which they were about to enter, with the deserts from which they had emerged, would be able to judge by the experience of centuries as to whether, where Peter reigns, the lifting up of the subject above lay government into the supernatural order had led to the elevation of the laity to supernatural goodness, or to the lowering of the clergy to the level of political officials.

Two writers, as dissimilar as Addison and Edgar Quinet, had, in some degree, anticipated the comparison here challenged, each speaking from a point of view suited to his own day and mode of thinking. The Englishman remarks how great is the difference between Roman Catholic populations where they touch upon reformed countries and where they are under the unbroken influence of the Papacy. Ignorance, superstition, and crime gradually deepen till the Alps and the Pyrenees are passed, when all these become strikingly worse.

The Frenchman says that there was only one model country in Europe. This was correct; for France had never cast out the influence of the Reformation, or made away with all the Protestants; and had, moreover, been the hotbed of what Quinet calls the philosophers. Italy, again, had always been a stronghold of the so-called philosophers, although all the Protestants had been consumed. In Spain, however, as he points out, the Inquisition had really fulfilled its mission; both Protestants and philosophers having been annihilated, schools and letters having been reduced to order, and the whole nation having been made to move for more than two hundred years on the Papal lines. The consequence was the total ruin of religion in the country.[69]

The comparison to which strangers were challenged by the Curia had the great advantage of being a comparison of good, not of evil. If the Papal States are to lay States as the oasis to the desert, proof actually lies before us of something more than human superiority—of something amounting to a higher dispensation. If the Papal States are but moderately superior to others, proof of any higher dispensation fails; but proof of human superiority remains. If they are only equal to lay States even proof of human superiority fails. If they are inferior, proof fails both of divine commission and of human superiority, and proof arises of the presence of greater human fault.

The only true book of Positive Philosophy yet (we do not say of Positive Science) is the blessed old Books of books. It brings everything to the test of fruits. It puts the extraordinary man to the test before ordinary men. He who refuses the ordained appeal to the Word, and to fruits, and to the verdict of every man's conscience, writes his own description as a false prophet.

We shall not, therefore, set out to compare evil, but good. We shall not inquire if there are more waste acres in the Papal States, more filthy huts, more wretched villages, more mean little towns called cities, more blighted prospects, talents thrown to waste, and families brought to decay, more liars, thieves, drunkards, blasphemers, and libertines, more depraved homes, more guilty conspiracies, more strikers, robbers, and assassins, more beggars in the streets, more idlers and extortioners in office, more wretches in prison, and more dead men in graves dug by the law, than, say, in our own far from immaculate or infallible England. We shall only look for the opposite of all these, and more of it—so much more as would furnish proof of a special dispensation of God's loving-kindness to men.

In one particular, such of the pilgrims as had heard of the desolation of the Roman Campagna would feel surprise, somewhat similar to that often felt by travellers in the Desert of Sinai. The latter, expecting to find extended plains of burning sand—a Sahara—find a country like another, only that it has no vegetation. So when pilgrims on the Campagna found green plains basking under a lovely sky, they would wonder how men could call it waste. Only by degrees would they realize the fact that there were no farm-houses, no labourers' cottages, no hamlets. In Arabia vegetation has failed, and with it animal existence. This region is a degree less desert: the herb enjoys life and supports the beast; only man has failed.

A trained observer seeing the plain forsaken and the villages in military positions on the heights, would at once say, as he would in Syria: The land has not learned what rest is! It has not yet experienced, for any continuance, that lot of conscious security in which the family suffices to itself, the lonely house is safe, and the village needs neither wall nor steep. The valleys of Tuscany or Piedmont tell a better tale of law and government.

When, at wide intervals, an inn or what is called a Tenuia occurs, perhaps it is announced by a few fine children, ill-clad and begging. The house has an expression of fear. The windows are few and small, and the yard, instead of a fence or low wall, is defended by a high one. There are no stack yards, no farm store and treasure spreading securely and ornamentally around as if conscious of strong, benign protectors. There is no grass-plot, no gravelled or flagged walk, no flower-bed before the door, no flower pot in the window, no garden. The house has never blossomed into the home. It is, after all these ages, but a shelter from weather and violence.

Entering, you find dirt to a degree neither easy to believe nor pleasant to describe, which grows worse and worse the longer and more minutely you observe. The furniture consists of a few stools, a rough table or bench, with a sack or two of straw for a bed. The few utensils, whether of earthenware or metal, are, like the stools and bench, poor in quality, rude in form, and ill-kept. Scarcely ever is there against the walls a print or photograph, an engraved sheet, a clock or plaster bust. You look in vain for book, periodical, or journal. The idea of children's picture-books, or of a cottage library, is out of the question; and the Bible is not to be seen. If there be a picture of the Madonna or the patron saint, it is, in point of art, far below the pictures which often light up the cottage of our humblest labourer. If there is a book, it is a wretched dream-book teaching how to succeed in the lottery. No polished chest of drawers, no white dresser, no fire range bearing witness of taste and "elbow-grease," no pretty crockery, no easy-chair. You may perhaps see a man asleep on the bare bench and another on the floor.

As you let the picture print itself, with all its inevitable comments, upon your mind, it calls up comparisons with what you have seen in the unlettered countries of the world—not with the homes that grow up around a family Bible. Here the arts which bring Art home to the multitude have found no entrance. Engraving, printing, carving, ornamental work in metal, wood, or pottery, gardening, or artistic husbandry, are graces that have not crossed this dirty threshold. The aesthetics, which have had some part in the government of the country have never developed the blessed aesthetic of home.

Physically, you find a race of great capacity. The frame, if wanting the compactness of the French and the solidity of the English, is large and shapely; such as after a few well-fed and well-housed generations would probably be one of the finest in the world. There is a certain sluggishness, which is generally called laziness. Perhaps it is not so much laziness as a lack of that physical elasticity which comes with successive generations of hopeful effort and good condition, but sinks away under hopelessness, or the effects of poor food and bad air. The natural intelligence is quick, and the manners generally polite, often winning. The pleasant word and the obliging act are both ready. But when did these carters and labourers wash? Was anything ever done to cleanse these garments, partly of goatskin with the hair attached and partly of heavy cloth? We do not call raids now and then to keep vermin under, an effort at really cleansing. And the heads of the women and children! Whatever the prevalent aesthetics have accomplished, they have never awakened the sacred aesthetic of the human person, which is not to be confounded with the lower aesthetic of dress.

Turning towards the villages, the observer is again reminded of Syria, where he may have been led on by the prospect of a beautiful city set on a hill, and found a squalid village. Self-defending construction, as in the case of the lone house on the plain, reappears here. No outlying cottages before the village, no detached ones within it, no gardens or orchards behind. The backs of the houses form a continuous high wall, pierced with small windows, constituting an irregular but not despicable work of defence. Again you find the absence of any bit of green, or of flower-beds before the house, or of flowers in the window. The gardens of Nottingham alone would put those of all the Papal States to shame, excepting such as are attached to palaces.

Before entering the houses one feels as if it would be unfair to compare them with those of English villages in our more cultured and sunny counties. But we may take a Yorkshire manufacturing village, near collieries. There the ground is dirty with coal slack; the air dirty with coal smoke and heavy with damp vapours; the houses are of the colour of baked mud, called brick; the sky is low, and more brown than grey. Nature and art seem to have combined to make the house dirty. Here, on the contrary, the ground is as dry as a board, the air bright, the walls of warm-coloured stone, the sky lofty, luminous and blue. Nature has done everything to suggest cleanliness, and also to reward it with such brilliant effect as we can only see in the brightest moments which summer lights up within our English homes. And as to manufacture, its grimy fingers have never touched the place.

Yet under the unfavourable conditions you find tidy women, with tidy children, by tidy firesides. The floor, seats, tables, drawers, dresser, walls, all show that the domestic arts of ornament, in however humble a style, are represented. The cottage child sits with its book on its knee, and you are not afraid to look into the corners. The Bible and hymn-book are probably upon the shelf; and if you do not know that the scene of the cotter's Saturday night is actually enacted there, you feel that it might be.

Under the favourable circumstances, on the other hand, floor, stairs, wall, furniture, utensils, and the persons of the women and children are kept in such a style that one of the women from the Yorkshire cottage would not like to pass a night in the place. And you must not look into the corners. Any stray picture which may be on the walls, only serves to remind you, by contrast, of the wonderful development of illustrative art in England, Germany, and America, and of its penetrating influence in the homes of the remote and poor. Here, sometimes, you may find, even in the village church, prints and dolls, the former of which in England would be considered poor, and the latter tawdry in the village shop. Yet in the same church there may be some real work of art, which has for generations had every opportunity of forming the public taste.

The land in these Papal States, like the people, is nobly capable; but our present inquiries turn, not upon the future, but upon proof of immaculate and infallible government, for the last thousand years or more.

Fixing, then, our attention on the works of man, we find cause repeatedly to wish that we had some measure for exactly determining how much progress has been made, amid these lovely scenes, by the human mind since it passed from under the dominion of Pagan Romanism into that of Papal Romanism. At present we have not the means of accurately settling this question, and perhaps we never shall have, though honest research may yet sufficiently elucidate it for a practical judgment. So long as Christianity worked by its legitimate forces, those of the Spirit alone, with its legitimate instrument, the Word alone, it cast out the cruel and obscene spirits of paganism, silently, but not slowly. In individuals and in families real Christians were made. This continued so long as the ministers of Christ ministered like their Master, reading the Word of God, and preaching it, but no more thinking of performing "functions," like the heathen, than He did; so long as they had neither place nor name in the posts graded and rewarded by human powers; so long as they enjoyed no consideration but what was won through wisdom, goodness, and spiritual fruitfulness; so long as their whole inheritance was not a profession, but a calling, which renounced the world, not by cutting God's holiest human ties, but by abandoning, for life, every hope of title, pomp, or power. So long as this spirit reigned, and whenever it again reappeared, they could point to numbers, whom they found vile but left created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works.

But from the time when Christianity became a public power, the courtier, the priest, and the crowd began to flow into the Church, and carried part of their heathenism in with them. When the device of the Emperors was parodied—and as they had assumed the office of Pontiff to confirm the civil dictatorship, the Roman Bishop assumed the temporal supremacy to confirm the spiritual dictatorship—all the three paganizing forces of statecraft, priestcraft, and popular superstition came more vigorously into play; with the result stated by Gregorovius: "So that Church which arose out of the union of Christianity with the Roman Empire, drew from the latter the system of centralization, and the stores of ancient language and education; but the people utterly corrupted, could not yield her the living material for the development of the Christian ideal. On the contrary, it was just they who in early times defaced Christianity, and permeated the Church, scarcely yet established in the Empire, with the old heathenism."[70] It was, however, on the new system of conversion that the people could not yield the material for developing Christianity. On the old one they had done so. When the Church waits for converts till the Spirit of God brings her penitents, she will always find material (often raw and foul, but capable) for doing all her work.

But we find the first step in an inquiry as to the progress which has been accomplished challenged by the Vatican philosophy, which decries modern improvements like the railway, telegraph, steam engine, and so on, as "material progress." When we ordinary mortals say "mental progress" we mean a progress of mind; but when the Pope says "material progress," does he mean a progress of matter? No; then what does he mean? Perhaps to suggest some such idea as the progressive ascendancy of matter over mind; but if so, it is unfortunate for him, as a philosopher, that the inventions he despises represent the advancing ascendancy of mind over matter. And very unhappy is it for mankind that all his influence goes to employ matter in colour, form, and movement, to make man a creature of sensation, and to stay the operation of reason and of faith, exchanging reason for sentiment and faith for sight.

Suppose that an observer before passing from the valley of the Sacco into that of the Anio looks at a historical place like Palestrina, situated on one of the noblest heights of the land; a point whence Pyrrhus and Hannibal, in succession, looked with the longing of warriors across the Campagna to the distant Rome; and whence the Temple of Fortune, emulating Egyptian proportions, and overspreading a whole hillside, dominated the plain, and held forth its lights to the far off sea. This city has a Cardinal Bishop, and a palace of the great Papal-princely family of the Barberini, and yet is what a homely Englishman would call a nasty village. If such a one had to pick his steps up the alleys that serve for streets, in the afternoon, when the issue of the cow-houses is flowing down them, he would rather be at home. The people are civil and apparently industrious, but the energy of the children goes out in begging. The decay and dirt which conquer all, furnish to an English eye a plain instance of material progress—matter gaining upon mind. The palace is neither kept up nor abandoned as a ruin, but, as if to set the town an example of thriftless filth, it is used partly for an aesthetic exhibition, containing as it does one wonderful mosaic, with frescoes and portraits of the Pope and Cardinals of the family, and is partly given up to—matter. Just as confidently as a skilled observer would conclude that Middlesbrough or Cincinnati bore witness against any claim to great antiquity, would he conclude that Palestrina bore witness against any claim to supernaturally good government. How much lower was the place when it was heathen?

From the ridge between the two valleys, by Civitella, the stranger has one of those prospects of which no previous travel blunts the charm, and no subsequent travel blunts the memory. Here he finds well-made men ploughing, and women with busts worthy of Sabine mothers carrying stones. Looking at the plough, he finds it only a few degrees stronger and better than that used by the ordinary Hindu ryot. It is very far behind the improved ones to be seen in northern Italy, and would be a real curiosity to Bedfordshire or Lincolnshire ploughmen.

If the observation of implements is extended to those of the handicrafts, it confirms the impression of want of taste made by those of agriculture. But tools are not things to make a show, and the noble aesthetic of labour has not been fostered. Labour is not part of the supernatural order, only of the natural; it serves but temporal ends. And who made the natural? And who dares to teach man, created in the image of God, that the daily duty appointed to him—duty to himself, his family, his country, and his race—serves but temporal ends? If neglected, are only temporal ends frustrated? When our Father sends us what fills our hearts with food and gladness, is He working nought but temporal ends? For what is helpful to sanctification commend us even to the stones on the head of the female hodman, rather than to the beads at the waist of the novice nun! Albeit the former is a coarse toil not to be seen without a blush by man born of a woman, yet is it a real lift at the load of life—a load natural and therefore divine; whereas the other is neither work nor play, not tending either to lift the load of life or to cheer on the labour of lifting it, but tending only to weaken all the powers by rendering the mind a slave of charms. Least of all is it spiritual or supernatural. It is simply manipulation applied by the master with sensational skill, and in the subject suspending thought on sensational routine.

How far do the villages of the thrice beautiful Sabina exceed those of our Lake District or of Wales in that poetic property of all villages, "innocence"? The last thing we should do is to set up our own as a standard. But if you hear the friars talk of the villagers, and the villagers of the friars and police, the townsfolk of the countryfolk, the doctor of his practice, and the priest of the refractory, you will hear mention made, with incidental ease, of crimes which, if committed in the Lake Districts of England, or in the tourists' haunts in Wales, would fill the journals for weeks. And how often here does scandal name the priest before all others!

Do the towns in Papal territory contrast with those in "lay States" as the oasis does with the desert? Suppose the observer to stand before Subiaco, seated amid Sabine peaks in the smiling valley of the Anio—a favourite haunt of artists, and worthy of their favour. A marble arch marks the entrance to the town; a summer palace of the Pope crowns it. A little way off stands the sacred cave where Benedict first taught. That is the Lupercal of Roman monasticism. There arose the institution which became the one grand public institution of Papal Italy—arose out of purposes not only pure, but lofty, though upon plans departing from those both of Moses and of Christ. These made the love of God in the individual a spiritual force to leaven the family, and made the family the basis of all institutions. The monasticism of the further east made spiritual life a dainty too delicate for the fireside. The Christian system made each new convert a moral agent acting within the social fabric. When Christians adopted the Oriental system, each new convert was abstracted from the social fabric, was taught to turn his or her back on the family, and to call being in the family being in the world, and renouncing the family renouncing the world. Out of a life of three-and-thirty years spent among men, our Lord has left us scarcely another trace of thirty of those years than this, that He spent them in the family.[71] This convent of Benedict still preserves its celebrated gardens, boasted of as a beauty for the whole earth—including the bed of roses, the lineal descendants of those which were transformed from thorns by miracle.

On the principles of Christianity, if this place has for ages enjoyed a spiritual government free from religious error, and a temporal one free from moral fault, and has, in addition, been blessed with the presence of the representative of God upon earth, we shall without fail find it a scene of enlightenment, righteousness, and bliss. It must in these respects be far before places where frail human nature has been in the hands of churches liable to err, and of governments which commit faults every day. If, on the other hand, they who have here been stewards of the unrighteous mammon have employed it ill, who will entrust to them the true riches, who will give to them the keeping of his soul?

At the entrance of the city, on a morning in May, the sound of chanting floats down the street, and a procession of clergy moves along, passes under the marble arch, and proceeds to a church in the suburbs. Then the priests bless the fields to secure good crops, as is done by the priests in India.

The streets of the city paraded by this procession are not beautiful, and had they been steeped for a few years in a smoky, moist Lancashire atmosphere they would be exceedingly ugly. They are not clean but dirty, below the condition of any country town in the Protestant parts of Ireland. They are not busy, but have a listless air, as if people had little to do and not much heart in doing it. The signs of enterprise and of improvement which in towns under good governments silently tell the tale, are not to be seen—signs which already, in 1867, might be traced in most of the towns of the New Italy. The well-dressed portion of the people is small, and the proportion of those poorly but tidily dressed extremely small. A gala costume even of the poor is fine, for whatever is for effect is studiously done. Many men and women, evidently not in abject poverty, but capable of dressing up for a state occasion, are not tidy, but badly the reverse. The number of ragged adults is great, and that of ragged children very great; it is hard to estimate that of the beggars, for even young women employed and not very miserably dressed, will take advantage of a passing stranger to seek a penny; and as to the children, begging appears to be a recognized branch of street life.

A young gentleman from Rome, tall and handsome, on the point of getting into a carriage with his companions, anxiously inquires if the road to Palestrina is safe. Have there not been attacks of brigands lately? The fact is not denied, though he is assured that all will be well. In any talk about quarrelling, the use of the knife—that is, the dagger-knife—is alluded to as a common incident. When any occurrence illustrates the amount of confidence felt by the people in the honesty or truthfulness of one another, it seems generally low on the first point and almost nil upon the second.

If the working classes show no sign of having been blessed with a government better than that of all mankind, does any sign of it appear among the trading classes? Beginning at the upper strata of finance and commerce, a merely English eye would look in vain for tokens of their existence. Coming down to the shops, perhaps an episcopal city in the "oasis" would so impress Roman Catholic shopkeepers from Thurles or Tuam that they would think a comparison profane. Their evil lot has been cast in a lamentable portion of the "desert," the misdeeds of whose rulers, and the wrongs of whose pastors and people, have often made the hearts of the devout in Italy to bleed. Protestant shopkeepers of Munster and Connaught would not be so awestruck but that they could make a comparison. They would not find under the fairer sky, and the theocratic rule, what they would take for symptoms of divine superiority. The shopkeepers of Enniskillen and Portadown, not blessed even with a heretic bishop, would smile at the comparison.

As to the professional classes, they are nearly absorbed in the clergy; for this is a state in which the only way to "found a family" is to begin by taking vows of celibacy, and the only way to bequeath coronets is to begin by renouncing the world. The one unworldly profession counts, among its prizes, a triple crown, scores of princedoms, ministries of state, of finance, and even of war, embassies, exceeding many palaces, honours surpassing those of nobility, gorgeous uniforms, lofty titles, revenues of enormous amount, with powers and dignities bearing a double value—one measurable by the standards of the world, and one immeasurable in the eyes of the faithful. The bulk of the land has passed into the possession either of corporations of clergy or of families founded by priests successful in their profession.

The Mosaic economy is generally taken to be more carnal than the Christian; but Moses, leaving Egypt, where the king and the priests were the only landowners, enacted that the priests should not hold land, and though married men, should have only a house and "a cow's grass." Here, on the contrary, the priest, though renouncing the world in some spiritual sense, comes a hundredfold more into possession of it in a material one. If mind shows its dominion over land and sea, over adamant and wind, over time and space, the feat is labelled for contempt as "material progress." If ministers of the Gospel become immersed in the management of manors, provinces, taxes, lotteries, and even of brigades, the fall is certificated for reverence as "spiritual" ascendancy. In Israel the royal tribe was one "of which no man gave attendance at the altar," and the priestly tribe one of which none came to the throne. Here the priest is king, and the temporal prince kisses his foot. A favourite image is that of the mystic David, pastor and king in one. Here is the cure of political naturalism.

The clergy of the Pontifical States included the two widest extremes of professional life to be found in Christendom—that of show and dressiness beyond what our courtiers or soldiers display, and that of personal meanness and social degradation to which no professional class among us approaches. Society seemed to avenge itself for the humiliations it had to suffer from the court priest, by the contempt with which it treated the clown priest. We once asked an advocate if all the priests did not read the Unitá Cattolica, and we give his reply, not as describing what priests are, but as showing what men of education may say of them—"All?" said the Dottore; "well, nearly all that can read." "But you do not mean to say that there are priests who cannot read?" "Well, not precisely; but there are many that could not read a journal intelligently, so as to enjoy it."

The co-existence of fear with hatred of a dominant priesthood may be observed in any country where priests have been the governing class, and perhaps, after the Pontifical States, may be best observed in India. The Brahmans, however, have not in the popular eye so direct a command over the lot of the departed as Rome has secured for her own priests, nor have they any such pecuniary profit out of the faith of the survivors. On the other hand, no class of Brahmans sinks so far below the average of respectability, among their countrymen, as do the lower clergy of the Roman and Neapolitan States.

But the contempt of the Italians for the priesthood is no more thorough than is their reverence. The man who will not introduce a certain priest to his daughters, will pay him to save the soul of his mother out of the pains of purgatory. To the Monsignore Don Juan, to use a term of Gregorovius, he will manifest profound respect, while in his heart he scorns him. To the not worse but less successful priest he will manifest contempt and spend some wit upon his vices, and yet, in his heart, will fear his occult power over the souls of his departed kindred.

The worldly professions have no such lot as the sacred one. Except the show corps for inglorious pomp around the sovereign, the military sphere for Romans is narrow, foreigners taking the lead. Letters are no profession. The civil service is principally in the hands of the priests. The law exists, and there are men with the titles of advocates and judges. But if we drew any idea of the status and "chances" belonging to such titles, from England, it would be altogether misleading.

Chief Justice Whiteside has shown how wide the difference is, and he spoke of the great city. In the little one of which we now speak, two English gentlemen, who could not find room in the inn, were directed to the house of an advocate, who played my host with assiduity and good humour, and charged four francs each for dinner, bed, candles, and service. The doctors seem most like men with a professional standing; and if they keep from politics, they have a fair chance of leading a quiet life in obscure usefulness.

Yet is the whole world called to take this state of things as the model of the subordination of the layman to the priest. "The idea of that subordination," we are told, "is realized in the Papal government." The ideal! This absorption, then, of the State into the so-called Church, this suppression of king, nobles, and people under the priest, is not an abnormal and monstrous lusus ecclesiae, but is the ideal of the new "political order." Any one can understand it—the king merged in the prince-bishop or else a vassal of the priest; the noble the retainer and jewelled ornament of the priest; the people the helots of the priest. That is the model. Here is realized for us the ideal of the one fold and one shepherd.

The English labourer knows that his son may, like James Cook, walk the quarter-deck, or, like Robert Stephenson, sit in the legislature. The Roman noble knows that the utmost his son, if not a priest, can rise to is to wear pearls and stars at the court of a priest, and kiss his foot when he makes a great show.

The kindly monk who, at Subiaco, shows a stranger over the Sacred Cave of Benedict, glories in far-famed gardens, which any peasant from Appenzell could tell him might be equalled in some private houses in such a village as Heiden. Fame sometimes draws out the dying notes of her trumpet unaccountably long. The monk is careful to enlist your admiration for several meritorious works in painting and sculpture, but to Protestants one gem is shown only by request. It is a portrait of the devil painted on the wall, in dark passages, and not visible except when a light is flashed upon it. This done, it appears for a moment, or longer, as the operator pleases, through one opening, fitted with real iron gratings, athwart of which the demon glares out of the gloom upon the spectator. Such a picture is capable of being put to uses that would meet the strongest views of those who call for something to strike the senses, and through them to affect the feelings.

As long ago as the days of the man of the land of Uz, the monotheistic way of depicting a spiritual presence was, "I could not discern the form thereof"; and, surely, even in that remote time, the aesthetic was higher than that of the Sacred Cave.

Following the smiling valley from Subiaco to Tivoli, one would, in 1867, probably see youths in the uniform of the zouaves, lounging on a bank, near one or both of the towns. Foreign mercenaries! would the Italians say. Foreign, certainly, and some of them mercenaries; but some, even in the dress of a private, would unmistakably show the gentleman—no mercenary, but a crusader who, in answer to the cry raised after Castelfidardo, has come from afar to fight for St. Peter, to "die for religion."

Even in this mountain valley the villages still keep to the heights. Where is the squire and his generous hall?—no room here for his magisterial office or commanding influence! Where is the farmstead, full and cozy, warm nest of fruitful brood sure to store a land with golden eggs? When the squire was quenched under the mitre of the abbot, the farmer was smothered in the cowl of the friar. Where are the parsonages and manses, homes where thought-culture is generally at the maximum, and external show often at the minimum, Christian families rooted in nature, blessed by divine ordinance, where woman is doing what the Mother of our Lord was doing at the head of her house—families holier a hundred times than the "religious" family, artificially substituted for nature and gospel? If from the list of bright names written up in England since the Reformation were blotted all that were first inscribed in the family Bible of parsonage or manse, that list would be more shortened than most men would imagine.

From the Villa d'Este at Tivoli, with its grandiose, ill-kept gardens, the prospect across the Campagna, when the distant city and its unique dome are limned against the sunset sky, is one of rare enchantment. Suppose that on these Sabine or on the Alban Hills you ask some intelligent inhabitant if these are not the Delectable Mountains, the summits of the true Celestial Empire, where no act of moral wrong has been done by the authorities for, say, the last ten hundred years. Perhaps you might hear such a statement as we once heard. It was from a gentleman in the pay of the government; but he knew that he had not to speak either to a priest or to that denationalized creature which Romans soon detect under the English form, a convertito. The statement may not have been correct. But it was such as under our unblessed lay government is never heard. It was such as under a good government could never be invented. Such a statement, professing to be made from a man's own knowledge, one never heard in Europe, except in Naples under the last two kings; but one might hear such in Egypt, and one could easily hear such, many years ago, in the Mysore, from old men talking of the times of Hyder Ali.

The desolation of the Campagna is the true and terrible material progress. Here physical impediments to health and life have conquered, not being encountered by moral and mental force. What natural riches are here! If England has wealth in its coal, how much has Italy in its sunshine? How much has that saved in the last thousand years in clothes, bedding, and fuel? How much in the wear and tear of buildings, and of implements? How much has it given in ripening what we can never ripen, and in ripening quickly and perfectly what we can ripen but slowly and in part? How much has it both saved and given in diminishing the physical temptation to intemperance? This soil, this sun, and in addition the tribute of nations, poured out here for ages in all the endless forms of Peter's gain—where is all that wealth gone? Here we are amid the riches of nature, to which successive centuries have brought riches of tribute, and yet are we wrapped around by silence, vacuity, and fear. Sleep not here! whispers every friendly voice. Wealth of matter, poverty of man! The Papal government is sometimes accused of bringing the malaria. No; it only let it come and let it stay. Like many who will not believe in invisible mind, it would not believe in invisible matter. The miasma was the hand of God, and was not to be fought against.

The Papal government is also accused of bringing all the foreign hordes who wasted this once glorious plain. It did not always bring them. It only brought them so often that had it been done by any faction in the heart of a country not being priests, mankind would have sunk the memory of the faction under eternal disgrace. Now, the sickly Campagna labourer, the thing like a Fijian hut which to him is home, and the buffalo, seem a meet monument to the memory of Saracen and Lombard destroying, and of Cardinals plundering, till only the grass was left. Who would have the heart to ask himself, Is this the proof that the oasis of priests amid the desert of lay States, is a garden planted of the Lord?

Roughly speaking, Rome is about the size of Dublin. All the Catholic world sighs over the woes and desolations inflicted on Ireland by Protestant cruelty. Where has Rome set up a suburb like Kingstown, Dalkey, or Bray? Where sown a tract of country with rich smiling homes like those which spangle the emerald from Dublin to the Wicklow hills? Where in the oasis could a bishop on returning to Belfast point to a creation of wealth and beauty made in Papal times equal to Holywood, or the Antrim shore? And could his colleague of Cork dare to make the people who look on the lone banks of the stream from Rome to the sea mourn for those who hang their harps by the "pleasant waters" that flow within sound of the bells of Shandon? Had the Roman Curia reigned there, the vale would now be insecure; a wretched village or two, with skeletons and clouts by way of relics in tawdry churches, would crown the heights; instead of villas, mansions, and cots, a monastery or two walled up to heaven would hold the best points on the hills, inviting artists, but perhaps ill rewarding them, while nursing idlers within and beggars without. And had Rome less reigned at Cork than she has done, a scene many degrees livelier and richer than that which now surrounds the fair city would have noted the response of intelligent industry to the boons of a very bountiful Providence.

Inside the capital of the oasis!—capital of a region where for a thousand years, at the very least, no act morally wrong has been done by authority, true bower of a peerless Eden! Let no Englishman say that these pretensions are not to be treated seriously. We should all have said so thirty years ago. But now men from any nation in Europe, some blaming us, some vaunting over our return, will tell us that of late years more has been done to accredit these pretensions by a portion of the English clergy than by any educated class in Europe, and that more to adorn and sanction these pretensions has been done by a portion of the English aristocracy than by any privileged class in Europe. This is one instance more of the fact that not interests but principles are the safeguards of mankind.

Is the city, then, morally the perfection of beauty? Is it so rich in the Christian graces as to accredit the claim to be the central seat of an infallible power, the one spot on earth where it is directly touched by a divine authority? The priest at once tells you how holy the city is: there are eight basilicas, more than four hundred churches, and more than two hundred convents. Yes, but perhaps the "religious family" fabricated by teaching woman that her holy place is not the family which God founded, and in which every man has his own wife and every woman her own husband, may not in operation have proved a better thing than the Christian family. Poor creatures put into an artificial family where duties ordained by God are made void, and ties set by Him as strings in the harp of nature to make holy melody, are rudely unstrung—a "family" in which many of the things called good works are neither virtues nor graces, but vain repetitions of fantastic forms—a family where the obedience called for is not obedience to any natural authority or to any divine law, but to arbitrary will; communities of poor creatures such as these, we say, may not in the long run have proved centres of holiness. When we ask if the city is holy, we mean nothing about basilicas, or churches, or convents; but we mean, are the people like Jesus Christ, like a people prepared as a fit population for a sinless heaven?

We shall in reply give nothing but a statement on one side from the Civiltá, and one on the other from the prelate Liverani, so that neither heretic nor foreigner, nay, not even a layman, shall disturb the testimony. The Civiltá,[72] after the occupation of the city by Italy, showed that one of its characteristics had been the perfect subordination of all civil arrangements to evangelical law. Christ reigns, Christ governs. This motto had in Rome a worthy and complete application. Not only individuals, but the family, the city, laws, policy, all social institutions, felt the salutary influence. In the metropolis of Christianity, marriage, education, instruction, the administration of justice and charity, public and private manners, had to be regulated by Christian laws and evangelical principles:—

Such to a nicety was Rome. It was called the holy city, that is, the city more than any other consecrated to God and forming the expression of the kingdom of God upon earth. And the effect of this Christian order was seen in the very virtues of the civil population. The Roman people was not second to any other in piety towards God, and in propriety of conduct; and not only so, but it seemed the most dignified, the gravest, and the furthest removed from vulgarity and tumult.

The prelate on the other hand says—and we begin at the Vatican (p. 87):—

Thus came it to pass that at the Court of Rome, that is, the house of the lieutenant of Him of whom it is written, "The evil shall not dwell with Thee, neither shall the unjust remain within Thy sight," turned into a sink of scandal and a sewer of every foul iniquity (p. 87). … It was always to me a mystery how the Roman clergy, rich in gold and lands till most of the Agro Latino is in their hands, with their splendid temples and sumptuous ceremonies, with their retainers diffused among all classes, with control of the charities, the pulpit, the confessional, the confraternities—how it is that with all these elements of power in their hands I hear from one end of Rome to the other the cry, Death to the priests! (p. 87). … The particulars hitherto related disclose [in the Court] an iniquity only too deeply rooted, and even turned into blood and nature; they disclose sores both inveterate and envenomed, hard to cure and hard to eradicate. It was this that made Clement VIII say to Bellarmine, "I have not strength to contend with such a flood of bad habits; pray to God to release me soon, and to shelter me in His glory." Also the brave Marcellus II was accustomed to repeat a sentence of Onofrio, which I do not wish to copy (133).

As to the people, we shall give but one word. Liverani, remarking on objections raised against modern Italian rule by the "good Press," because certain houses existed in the cities, says:—

It reminds me of a pleasantry of the old rector of the parish of St. Angelo in Pescheria, who one day said to me that when he took charge of the parish he found one house bad and one not so, turn and turn about; but he soon found that they were all alike. This editor is ingenuous and innocent as if he wrote in a land of angels, instead of in the place where not long ago a prelate-judge abused his office to the point of using violence with arms in his hands against the sister and daughter of the convicts, so that he was prosecuted before the Vicar and before the Holy Office, and removed from the bench; but after a few years, the good nature of the prince being overcome by powerful intercession, he was reinstated in another judicial office.

We shall not go further into this subject than to add that one of the bitter reproaches cast upon the Italian senate by the Unitá was that when the most noted and most respected living man in Italian literature and politics, Mamiani, said, speaking on the conscription, that at all events the morals of the barrack-room were better than the morals of the convent, the senate received the statement with loud applause.

However correct or incorrect may be the views of the several witnesses from whom we have heard a word, there can be no hesitation in pronouncing that any attempt to show evidence of divine superiority utterly fails—so utterly as to be more than ridiculous. But if there is not divine superiority, there must have been false pretensions. The one or the other is inevitable. If the States of the Church have not for the last thousand years been ruled by the representative of God, they have been ruled by one who was himself deceived and a deceiver of others.