Roman dollars per annum, though offerings from the faithful in various countries have (especially in the case of his present Holiness) brought occasional augmentation to these narrow means. Among the thousand chambers of the

Vatican, few, and those not the largest,

are reserved for his residence. In the

Quirinal palace he has a more magnificent suite; but his villa on the lake of Albano, and that lately purchased at Porto d'Anzio, are surpassed in scale and grandeur by many country seats of gentlemen and noblemen in England. Though always appearing abroad with a cortège of chariots and mounted guards, in private his habits are simple, his dress entirely white, with a gold embroidered cross on the slipper, which is kissed in the act of that homage he usually dispenses with from non-Catholics at presentation, and of which he himself sets the example, so far as Christian humility is implied, by kissing the feet of priests (who are generally poor and strangers) during the solemnity of Holy Thursday. He holds no levees, but access to him is

easy, through application to proper officials, for persons of almost every rank, with no other requirement as to eti

females.

quette of costume than black evening dress without gloves, and the veil for I may add, as to the private life of Pius IX., that he daily celebrates mass in his private chapel, and attends another mass said by a chaplain: dedicates the entire morning, till an early dinner, to his duties; then drives out, and (when beyond the city walls) usually walks; returns again to occupy his hours, till a rather late supper, in that routine of endless and everprescribed engagements that render the life of a Pope little else than a magnificent slavery. Among these engagements, audiences, official and private, are not the least prominent or wearisome; and I have heard of his present Holiness having literally to spend the day till 7 P.M., in one series of recep

tions.

"Most of the ecclesiastics enrolled in the Papal Court rank as prelates; and this household is at present composed of the Cardinal, Secretary of State, Pre

fect of the Apostolical Palaces,' a major domo, a mæstro di camera, an auditor, the maestro of the sacred palaces (who is always a Dominican and head of the censorship over the press), 10 private chamberlains, 102 private supernumer ary chamberlains, all, like the former, of prelatic rank," &c. &c.

The title of Prelate, it is hardly necessary to say, is not synonymous,

as it is in England, with that of Bishop. It is an honorary title conferred by the Pope, and the bearer of it may be a priest or layman. He has the tonsure, is called Monsignor, has any chance of exchanging his and wears violet stockings. If he violet for the scarlet stockings of a cardinal, or any hope of valuable preferment, he probably, in course of his career, becomes full priest; if the prospect of promotion no longer tempts him along the ecclesiastical career, he retires and becomes decided layman. "He marries," so M. About says, for one takes a wife here on the day of one's despair. An ambitious man who is disappointed kills himself at Paris-at Rome he marries."

Much has been said and written about the admission of laics into the civil government of Rome, and Mr Hemaus gives us a long list to show how large a proportion of offices are held by laymen; but he has the candour to acknowledge that these statistics, on which Mr Maguire and others have laid so much stress, "convey no proof that the directing principle-the animus of this system-is not exclusively ecclesiastical." They certainly prove no such thing. If the higher offices and all the patronage are in the hands of the Church, the lay official is sure to be the mere tool and instrument of the Church. These prelates of whom we have been speaking are not, in general, priests, but they cannot fail to be priestly in their ideas and policy; they expect everything from the Pope. One wonders that certain reasoners have not discovered that the present government is decidedly laic, since the prime minister is a cardinal - deacon. Why, even the lowest functionaries that serve this clerical monarchy must be imbued with the clerical spirit! We see here in England that the parish beadle, though unquestionably a layman, has the ecclesiastical spirit in him as strong as the rector-probably much stronger.

An amusing use is made of this circumstance that some of the highest ministers of the Pope are not, strictly speaking, priests. Of the cardinals. some are cardinal

piety of his flock, or the prosperity of his church. To him a great criminal, who is a sound Catholic, is not half so detestable as a good citizen who is a bad believer. What is

earthly prosperity itself? Adversity and Christian resignation are much better. We rise easily above the pleasures of others; and can willingly stand sponsors for any poor child that it shall renounce the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. And if all ecclesiastics are not pietists, they rarely fail of being good churchmen; so that no object of civil government will be carried forward beyond the point where it is quite compatible with the wealth and dignity of the Church, and the mental submission of the laity.

The Papal Government is a despotism-the short-lived constitution given by Pius IX. may be regarded as a nullity-and it must share in all the evils of that unchecked form of government. The despotism, it is true, is in the hands of a man not likely to use his power in wanton acts of cruelty, but it is also in the hands of one who, in the great interests of his hierarchy, would feel himself justified in any arbitrary act. Moreover, there are certain defects which follow directly on the spiritual nature of the government, as that indiscriminate charity which produces the very poverty it vainly attempts to overtake, and that mischievous lenity towards criminals, which it balances by a severity equally mischievous against all who venture to think for themselves.

"That discontent prevails at Rome," writes Mr Hemans, "against all authori ties, political, municipal, and religious, is apparent to the most superficial observer; and, allowing for exaggera tions or causeless ill humours, the constant expression of that feeling must be admitted to represent a moral fact, though few may be qualified fully to account for its origin or intensity. Those

who live under a government must,

generally speaking, be better able to appreciate it than theorisers at a distance. Most severely has the judicial system of this country been criticised, both at home and abroad; and one of its aspects too prominent at Rome cannot be defended, in the arbitrary principle manifest in such abuses as arrests on mere

suspicion, indefinite delay of trials, prolonged imprisonments before sentence or even investigation has ensued."

And, finally, after reviewing some from a government which punishes of the judicial anomalies that spring sin more than crime, and disbelief as the greatest of sins, our author concludes by giving in his adhesion to the opinion that the Catholic religion would be greatly strengthened if the Papacy could limit itself to a spiritual dominion.

"In many minds," he says, "and almost universally in this country, the idea now obtains that the highest credit of the Papacy can only be restored by separation from the temporal sovereignty,

or at least such modification of that so

vereignty as to reduce it simply to a guarantee for independence, political and financial."

In other European Governments the ecclesiastical and civil powers criticise and check each other. Both need this sort of criticism. A religious corporation is of admirable service as a censor to the state and the people; but if there is no power in the nation to overlook and pass judgment on the religious corporation, it will run riot or become corrupted. A religious corporation made despotic becomes the most despotic of all governments, for it is despotic over mind, body, and estate.

Again, there are needful and imperative functions of the state which are altogether inappropriate in the hands of the clergy. How can a genuine Christian priest keep alive The sword should be placed in other the military spirit of his subjects? hands. Even the sword of justice he cannot wield with the necessary energy and promptitude. The judge here in England sentences a criminal to be executed, and forthwith pious clergymen come round him and do their utmost, in the interval between the sentence and the execution, to prepare the murderer for his advent into another world. This is as it should be. The objection that some have made, that this dismissal to happier regions of the penitent criminal detracts from the terror of the punishment, and, therefore, from its salutary effect upon society, is one

of those objections which seem to have validity till we look closer into the matter; for, in fact, this concern manifested for the safety of the soul makes death itself more terrible, and, upon the whole, augments the horror that hangs over capital punishment. But what if we allowed the visiting clergy, or the pious home missionary, to delay the execution till he was satisfied that the soul of the criminal was saved? The certainty and promptitude of the punishment, on which all its efficacy depends, would be at an end. Yet this is what is done in Rome. A Catholic priest does not think the soul saved unless the criminal has received absolution, and he cannot receive absolution until he has confessed his sins. If a crime has really been committed, there is a confession of it to be made, and till this confession has been extracted the priest is reluctant to sign the warrant for his execution. Thus assassins and banditti men who have made robbery and murder their trade-have been kept in prison till it has been felt that it was too late to punish them! the populace had forgotten their crimes, and would look only with compassion on their death. The right of asylum is still retained in the Roman States. It keeps up the sacredness of churches and churchmen. Even murderers must acknowledge there is some good in religion, if it shelters them from the pursuit of justice.

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All temporal interests are subordinated or postponed to a fictitious piety a piety divorced from its rational connection with human wellbeing. Much of the land is held in mortmain what can it better do than support pious souls who pray for others? You talk in vain of improvements, of long leases, of better modes of communication, roads and railways these pious souls must not be disturbed; and what else can be demanded of them than to transmit to others the same immunity from all mundane cares which, for the profit of mankind in general, they have submitted to enjoy? Even the most beautiful and beneficent of human feelings that charity which interests us in the welfare of others, and with

out which a human society must become stagnant and corrupt-is made a mischief and a calamity by being converted into an arbitrary rule of this fictitious piety. It is enough that the man gives-as if all charity consisted in giving—as if it were not incumbent to help also by prompting to self-help-as if it were not a matter of duty to reflect on the ultimate result of our giving. Is the mere self-sacrifice on the part of the giver of so much coin, to satisfy the duty of Christian and rational charity? Yet the Papal Government itself, and every monastic institution, and every individual whose conscience is under the tutelage of the priest, merely gives, and gives-and a frightful amount of poverty is the inevitable result.

In thought as well as in action there can be no advancement under this government. The church of the middle ages is to assert its authority over the minds of a more enlightened and civilised era. It is bad enough when this end is to be accomplished through the assistance of a monarchical power, with whom the hierarchy has made alliance-what must it be when the hierarchy can act for itself, without the intervention of an ally who has his own objects and his own interests to consult? The press is put under a rigid censorship: the education of the people is put under the supervision of the priesthood. All philosophy, all history, all science, is limited or falsified to just that teaching which will accord with its religious dogmas. A grown-up man cannot read a heretical book, even for the sake of controverting it, without the written licence of a priest; and this written licence will contain express exceptions. Mr Hemans gives us one in which the whole works of Bentham are excepted. The dry laborious works of our reforming jurist were not to be read, even for the sake of controverting them. Some may think less of this intellectual slavery than of civil or municipal abuses; but they think very erroneously: it lies at the root of the matter. How can any practices of such a government be reformed, if the doctrines from which they flow, or the spiritual

authority by which they are maintained, may not be questioned?

We avoid mentioning many of the harsh and spiteful acts with which the present government is charged, because we desire to keep distinct those evils which may be traced to the individual pope or minister, from those which are inherent in the system itself a system which unites in the same person a spiritual and temporal despotism. There is no care in this government-there is no faith in human progress. It has only to preserve, to enjoy, to give its subjects paradise and purgatory. There is no earthly progress for the people worth a thought. The old and detestable plan of monopolies holds its place in Rome-monopolies of tobacco, salt, sugar-we know not whatare given or sold by the government. What motive has it for securing to human industry greater scope and more equitable treatment? You would say that so vicious and demoralising a method of raising money as the lottery, would at least be abandoned by a government so moral in its pretensions that it prudishly interferes with the anatomical studies of the schools of surgery; but no, it holds its place.

"Though not to the same degree a furore here as at Naples, and though the public extraction at Rome is only bimestral, not weekly, as at the former city, the effects are scarcely less ruinous in one than the other State. On Saturday, twice in the month, it is that a large and excited multitude assemble in the piazza in one of Rome's older quar: ters, before the stately palace called 'Madama' from its foundress Catherine

de Medici, now appropriated to offices of government. At a balcony high on the front appears a group of authorities, with a chaplain and a theatrically-dressed little boy standing before a cylindrical vessel in a frame. When all is ready, after this receptacle has been made to turn rapidly on a pivot, the little chief actor (whose innocence is used to impose upon the crowd in the equivocal transaction) draws slowly out from the vessel the winning numbers, each of which is loudly proclaimed to the people. If the glittering 'gin-palaces' in London streets be a reproach, not less so is the nightly illuminated lottery - office in Rome-open later than all other establishments, and under no obligation of

closing for any festival. Poor families in this city lay by their little earnings weekly, to the privation of parents and children, for buying numbers to play; and when one observes the degrading superstition among other results, astonishment is increased at the support, by ecclesiastical government, of a system so odious. Divining, dream-interpretations, charms, are among the train of attendant evils, despite their being condemned dogmatically by the Church. Il vero libro dei Sogni is a vile publication, sold at almost every stall in Rome (without impediment from the rigorous censorship that has not spared Gioberti or Rosmini), a snare for ignorance, that professes to give the corresponding

lucky number' for every object that can be thought or dreamt of!-even the name 'Papa' admitted, with its appropriate divination in three numbers; and prete, cardinale, cardinalato, each with its number for gambling on-besides other terms grossly indecent ! More deplorable is it that such superstition should be supported by any minister of religion; but the belief widely prevails, and is to a degree encouraged by those who should labour to uproot it, gifts of divination for the lottery. I was visited once by a friar, an entire stranger, who mysteriously intimated that if I were a lottery-gambler he could tell me something worth knowing-for which I thanked him."

that certain of the mendicant friars have

For all apology you are told that the people of Rome would gamble in the lotteries of other States, if they had not one of their own. One would think that here, if anywhere, the Papal Government would set a good example to its neighbours; but it seems to argue as Cowper's schoolboy, "If the orchard must be robbed, I may as well go shares." M. About suggests that the Court of Rome may not altogether disapprove of the sort of education a lottery assists in giving. It is true that there may be some advantage, he says, in teaching people to depend on their industry rather than on their luck. But then, in the Roman States, where industry leads to little, the lottery is a consolation for the poor. One can always hope, and the Church teaches us to live on hope; and it is a bad habit of the mind to rely upon ourselves. Better rely on providence, on miracle, and pray to the saints for a good