and never scruples to ask another to wait an hour or two, as easily as an Englishman would beg for a minute. They set no value on time, simply because it is of little use to them. Well! the frontier is at last passed, and after traversing a few miles of road very strikingly worse than that on the Tuscan side of the boundary, the traveller, with much difficulty and some danger, is dragged up the hill of Aquapendente. A worse hill in a great high road it is hardly possible to conceive. So it was constructed ages ago; and so has all the traffic between Florence and Rome passed over it for many generations. That it might easily be improved appears never to have entered into the head of any one during all that time. The Diligence, which travels this road—the sole and privileged one of course takes about 48 hours to accomplish the journey of less than 200 miles, and is drawn by from two to fourteen horses or oxen, according to the exigencies of the road. The mail, which traverses the same road, is constantly several hours behindhand; but nobody dreams of complaining, and still less does anybody dream of mending the road. The top of the hill, however, is at length reached, and the traveller enters the first town of the Papal States. Let him come from what country he may, unless it be from Ireland, he must, we think, be astonished and dismayed at the squalid misery, dilapidation, ruin, and filth, which presents itself to his eyes on all sides. The appearance of the streets, the buildings, the shops if such they can be called the population of all ages and classes-all speak the same tale of wretchedness and degradation. The remainder of the journey repeats the same eloquent lesson at every mile of its course. The moral aspect of things (which may, however, be always inferred with tolerable accuracy from the external manifestations of physical wellbeing or the reverse) — as far as may be judged from the few little indications which fall under the notice of the observant traveller, is in complete accordance with the rest of the picture. Fraud, falsehood, and mendicity force themselves on the notice of the least observant. At length the stranger stands before the gate of Rome. It is an epoch in the life of the most unimaginative that first entrance into the ancient mother of so much civilization and of so much barbarism—that eternal city which mankind has so much cause to bless and so much to curse! And here we must quit the course of the ordinary traveller, if we would form any idea of the real condition of Rome. The tourist, wrapped in an ecstasy of imaginative pleasure, full of all the mighty host of classical and medieval recollections and associations, passes through the handsome and tolerably clean, because almost uninhabited, Piazza del Popolo, gazes up the magnificent terrace of the Pincian on his left hand, and reaches his splendid hotel in the Via Babuino, charmed with his first impressions of "the eternal city," and disappointed in nothing save in not having heard a picturesque group of peasants singing under the walls, " Roma, Roma, Roma, non è più come era prima.” Let us, however, not confine ourselves to those parts of the town frequented ordinarily by the English and other strangers. Let us penetrate the mass of buildings between Santa Maria Maggiore and the Coliseum; let us visit the Trastevere; above all, let us venture into the reeking mass of abomination situated between the capitol, the Farnese Palace, and the Tiber. The constant state of the streets is such as to make it marvellons that typhus and a hundred other forms of filth-bred disease do not sweep off the miserable population. Drainage appears to be unknown. The very commonest decencies of life are wholly disregarded. The stench is insupportable. It has occurred to ourselves, incredible as the statement may appear, to have observed the remains of a dead sheep suffered to lie in the same spot in one of the streets of Rome, and to poison all the surrounding atmosphere with its decay and putridity for more than ten days. We have also, and that frequently, observed the dead bodies of cats and dogs lying in the same spots for days together. The appearance of the population in the streets matches well with that of their dwellings — sordid, ragged, unhealthy looking creatures are sauntering in the shade, or basking in the sunshine; or if occupied in some kind of labor, are so performing it as to spread out the fair toil of an hour over half a day. Such is the physical aspect of mighty Rome! Its moral features are of course not so plainly visible or easily appreciable; they can only be judged of by the occasional specimens which chance may afford an observer in his conversation and dealings with the people; but if these be fairly estimated, they may be deemed tolerably accurate exponents of the entire truth; and that truth we conscientiously believe to be— that the whole body of society, from the highest to the lowest grade in the social scale, is altogether corrupt and vitiated. We do not put forth a conclusion so sweeping, a conviction so painful, unadvisedly or lightly. We are not unmindful of the danger of forming general conclusions from particular instances. We are aware that the portion of any society which a traveller most readily meets with is very generally the worst part of it; but every à priori consideration would lead to the persuasion that the moral condition of the people of Rome must be that which the most careful observation shows in fact that it is. It is not that villany, fraud, and vice abound; alas! where do they not? It is, that shame is dead; it is that the moral sense has perished; it is that that which is vile has ceased to be hated as such, even by those whose better instincts, superior prudence, or lesser temptation, have saved them from themselves becoming so. These are the true and unerring tests of a corruption and degradation which has infected the entire social body, and so entered into the diseased system as to render hopeless all cure short of thorough renovation. The wealthy proprietor of a palazzo in the Corso, by means of assertions apparently the most ingenuous, induces an English family to sign a lease without requiring that certain stipulations should be inserted therein formally. On the morrow the promises are violated, and the assertions proved to be wholly and wilfully false. The Roman gentleman who has committed this act of swindling, on being applied to in amazement by his dupes, replies with the utmost tranquillity, that no assertions or agreements that are unwritten are worth any thing. prevent no crimes, and discover no criminals. Murders occur in the streets of the city, and the murderer is secure. Within our own knowledge the minister of police himself declared to an applicant for protection against outrage, that he advised him to quit Rome, as he was powerless to protect him! In the financial departments the system of fraud and corruption — which has grown with their growth, and become part and parcel of their quasi normal constitution—is such as to render all hope of purifying them vain. We were ourselves assured by one who has since become one of the ministers of the Crown, that to his knowledge the peculation in one branch of the post-office business was enormous. He named the sum, amounting to many thousand scudi; but we will not undertake to repeat figures which we did not note at the time. Let us turn for an instant to the indications of moral condition which the spiritual aspect of Rome, in the midle of the nineteenth century, may afford us. We will do so in no polemical spirit. We will not make our observations from the stand-point of any other creed or rival sect, but as purely philosophical students of social phenomena. Trusting then that our readers will so regard us, and will believe us to be as wholly free from the odium theologicum as we know ourselves to be, we hesitate not to declare our conviction, that a more degrading superstition, a more gross and unspiritual idolatry, does not exist in any heathen land, than is practised under the name of Christianity in the metropolis of the Christian world. We are not now speaking in any wise of the Roman Catho A "respectable" tradesman uses false weights nearly to the extent of insuring a diminution of cent. per cent. in the quantity of goods furnished. The tribunals are applied to; but as the amount in each case is small, the magistrates and lawyers cannot be made to comprehend why a complainant should give himself and them more trouble than the amount of the fraud was worth. But the robbery of a shilling, it is urged on their attention, is as much robbery as that of a mil-lic faith as held and practised elsewhere. There lion; the man is dishonest, and ought to be exposed and punished. No! they can conceive no other reason why such a complaint should be made than with the view of recovering that which the complainant has lost. No man expects to be trusted. None is in any way offended that the most minute and humiliating precautions against his presumed dishonesty should be openly and avowedly taken. If we turn our views to more immediate manifestations of the action of Government, the few peeps which the rents in the curtain of official mystery rather than any properly provided publicity afford us, indicate, if possible, a still worse degree of corruption. No institution, no office, no authority, no department rightly and sufficiently performs the functions for which it was created, unless indeed it be the lottery-office that truly does its appointed work of demoralization and pillage on the people, and does it well and thoroughly. The tribunals notoriously delay, refuse, and pervert justice. The police is every à priori reason to expect that a more northern people should hold a more spiritual faith. We know well that the Roman Catholicism of Rome is not that of France, or of Germany, or of England; still more, even, we are not undertaking to speak of Roman Catholicism at Rome, as the priesthood profess to hold it and to teach. We speak of it only as we know that it is practically held and followed by the mass of the people: and we are sure that our assertions will be supported by any who have without prejudice examined the subject. We are not ignorant of all that has been said to defend the Roman Catholic faith from the charge of imageworship. We know that the priesthood explain, that the figures which are dressed, bedizened, kissed, caressed, prayed to, carried about, &c. are not worshipped, but used only as suggesters of things spiritual to the outward bodily senses. But is this theory compatible with the fact, that of various figures of saints-of the virgin in particular, some are deemed more holy, more The truth that the religion of modern Rome is in reality a modification of Paganism, was well pointed out in a little book entitled "Rome Papal and Pagan," which appeared a year or two since. It was not then asserted for the first time; but the intrinsic identity of the two faiths in their practical effects on the popular mind was well and convincingly proved. And we bring the testimony of another witness to the truthfulness of the author's facts and infer powerful, more propitious than others?—that | innocent citizens, in blind indiscriminate vensome votaries prefer one image, and some anoth-geance, and that this vengeance might be averter, of the same saint?— that "la Madonna di "ed by a certain amount of reiterated repetitions this place is specially famous for granting favors of a given form of words!" Is it possible to of one sort; and "la Madonna di" that place conceive a more benighted state of mind than is for bestowing favors of another kind?-that here evidenced? Do Juggernaut's disciples one Church possesses and draws a large revenue form to themselves a lower and more immoral from a wooden "bambino," i. e. infant Christ, notion of their deity than these so-called Chrisparticularly celebrated for assisting women in tian priests? child-birth, and sent about in coaches for that purpose; while another has one specially valuable as preserving its votaries from shipwreck? Do not these fact prove beyond all possibility of avoiding the conclusion — that special virtue is attributed to the image itself? If the Saviour or the Virgin were the intended object of the worship, would not it be in any case the same at all their different altars? Is there one Saviour in one Church, and a second, with different qualities and character, in another? Is the virgin of one shrine kinder than the virgin of another? No; it is impossible to deny the truth, that the popular worship of modern Rome is as absolutely and essentially an idolatry as any that has ever degraded mankind. The truth is, that the Paganism of old Rome has never been entirely and effectually eradicated. The old deities of the Roman Pantheon still haunt the seven hills; and in spirit as well as inty of foreign goods consumed, are hampered bodily fact the statues of the old gods have often changed their name alone, to become the objects of modern worship. The first result of such a system most necessarily shows itself in an erroneous, unworthy, and degraded conception of the Supreme Being. As a roof of the extent to which this result has been produced, we will cite a fact which has already been noticed in the columns of an English Journal. A highly prized and magnificently adorned relic the head of Saint Andrewhad been stolen from the Church of Saint Peter. The canons of that basilic thereupon issue a placard, with which the walls of Rome are covered, offering a reward for the recovery of the stolen treasure, and setting forth that they, the canons, would offer up extra prayers for the space of three days, for the purpose of appeasing God, and averting the evils with which he might be expected to visit the city in consequence of the theft. Here," as the Journal* above alluded to well remarks, "is a numerous body of educated men asserting their belief that the Supreme Being may be expected to manifest anger for a certain special theft above what he would feel at any other crime of a similar nature - that this anger would be manifested by inflicting evil, not on the thief, but on the แ *Athenæum, No. 1066. ences. After speaking of such a deplorable want of moral civilization, it would seem an anticlimax to enlarge on the deficiency of physical progress. Suffice it to say, that the absence of all the smaller as well as of the more important commodities of life is most striking. Commerce does not exist. The infinitely small trading transactions which do supply the small quanti with obstructions, and oppressed by duties to an all but prohibitory degree. And the stupid acquiescence of the people in things as they are, lends additional effect to the paralysing influence of the Government. Take one instance of this, as shown in the case of one of the simplest articles of daily use. The Romans cannot make any tolerable ink it is imported from France and from England: and one of those little stone-bottles so familiar to English eyes, which costs sixpence at an English stationer's and thereby affords the retailer a very large profit, is sold in Rome for about a shilling, or rather more. The Roman stationer asserts-truly enough perhaps that the heavy duty makes it impossible for him to sell the article at a lower rate. But on inquiry it is found that duty is levied on the gross weight, so that the stone-bottle, which weighs far more than its contents, is by far the most costly part of the purchase; yet it has never entered into the head of the Roman tradesman that he might import his ink in large bottles, and divide it off himself into small quantities for retail sale, and thus diminish his duties by one half or more! No, no! Such profound speculations are quite out of the line of his habitual thoughts. "Pulchra Madonna Da mihi fallere * ** would be still, we fear, the more likely tendency of his thoughts. And such is the city, and such the peoplethe product of long years of misgovernment which the Ninth Pius would now restore to the benefits of a liberal and enlightened rule. Such is the nation which, itself loathing its own degeneracy, is struggling for self-government and regeneration. And now let us turn again to the question proposed above:- what portion of the system of Papal Government can be usefully preserved, and what must be destroyed in the attempt to improve this so wretched people? The intention of Pius the Ninth, at the commencement of his career of reformation, was to preserve whole and inviolate the absolute authority of the Papacy in temporal as in spiritual matters. He very distinctly stated his views on this point on more than one occasion. On the first assembling of the "Consulta," he declared, in his address to the members, that he did not intend by that institution to diminish in any respect the absolute power of the Sovereign; that those were much in error who saw in it the germ of a system incompatible therewith; that it was his duty and his determination to hand down to his successors in the chair of St. Peter, the power he had received from his predecessor whole and intact. His Holiness intended that the government of the Papal States should remain an absolute despotism. We were ourselves in Rome at that time, and had then ample means of convincing ourselves, that the Romans did not so understand the boon granted them; and it was not difficult to foresee, that a very short period would suffice to contradict the expectations of his Holiness nay, that the power had even then already departed from the sceptre of the Innocents and the Gregories. Since that time the rushing torrent of European events has so precipitated the course of things at Rome, that the above declaration of the Pope, made some six months ago, seems obsolete by a hundred years. No further illusion can remain to the Holy Father of handing down to his successors that old power which he received. He must now at least know that the temporal power of St. Peter's successor has departed from him for ever. Pius the Ninth's first estimate of what could be preserved and what must be abolished of the old Papal system was then an erroneous one. And now, even while we are writing these pages, that question is being debated amid strife and trouble, violence and tumult, discontent on the one hand, and conscientious distress on the other. It is beginning to be evident that NO portion of that proud fabric can be preserved. It needs but small sagacity in reading the signs of the times to become convinced that the temporal power of Papacy verges to its close. The entire edifice was too rotten to admit of mending. The bold mason who cut the first crumbling stone from out the tottering wall, has brought down the entire mass with a crash. England watches the startling spectacle not uninterested. In truth, the phenomena there exhibited are evolving a lesson which should be pregnant with utility to mankind. But though much has been written of late by the English press on the aspect and probabilities of affairs at Rome, no portion of it seems to have seized on the great truth which they are calculated to teach us. Some of the most accredited organs of public opinion, on the contrary, speak of the question at issue as a dispute between the Pope and his subjects, which should be settled according to the dictates of good feeling, and mutual forbearance and moderation. The generosity of the Pope is insisted on, and his subjects accused of ingratitude in forcing from him further concessions. But we believe such an appreciation of the subject to arise from wholly inadequate notions of the state of Rome, and the workings of its government. The real merits of the question must be examined on quite other grounds, and the conclusion to be arrived at will be one of much wider application than the dominions of the Church. For, in truth, the attempt which Pius the Ninth engaged in was from the first an impossible one. He was endeavouring to coördinate incompatibilities. His object was nothing less than to conciliate the liberal institutions which the advanced political science of this age demands, with the pretensions of absolutism, and that absolutism vested in the hands of a ruler pretending to infallibility. What success could have been anticipated from such a scheme? Accordingly but little progress is made before diffculties arise-difficulties insoluble under the conditions of the experiment. All the parties concerned find themselves in a false position. It is soon discovered by both Pope and people that it is impossible to get on with ministers selected from the clergy, and especially from the Sacred College. Lay ministers are substituted, and thus another vast portion of the nodding edifice falls. A few more weeks, and a "constitution" is proclaimed, a representative body is created, and the Pope becomes a constitutional monarch, sharing his power with a lay parliament! Does any one at all conversant with the workings of a free government anticipate the permanent duration and successful operation of a political machine so constituted? The Roman hierarchy itself, with the instinct of selfpreservation, inserted in the draft of this consti tution certain clauses framed in the vain hope of preserving itself from the action of the supreme power it thus created. It was provided that the sums needed for Church purposes should be voted without discussion or inquiry; that no subject in any way bearing on Church matters should be touched on; and finally, that the parliament should have no power of revising or meddling with this fundamental statute. Futile attempt! An omnipotent power (as all representative parliaments must be) is created, and is requested to bear in mind that its omnipotence is hedged in by some other power, which is nowhere visible or tangible! It is an old attempt, but all experience has proved the absurdity of it. Then arises, ere long, a yet worse dilemma: -The monarch finds it inconsistent with his duty as a priest and Pope to do that which would be his duty as a lay monarch, and which his ministers and the entire nation deem to be their duty to their country. The "constitution" is at a dead lock. ity, and influence? On the other hand, if true to his early professions-if true to that spirit of absolutism on which his throne is based, the Pope resists the tide of liberalism as it rises around him—his temporal authority is doomed. That fabric goes to pieces — the result of a larger amount of toil, perseverance, energy, and intellectual power, than the world ever saw applied to a like object. The disruption of the Church and State at Rome - the breaking of the tie where first the bonds were knitted, and when the knot was most tightly drawn - what over Europe would be the future which such an event should usher in? We venture not to forecast it. Of the works whose titles stand at the head of this article, there is but little to be said. The two French works are mere catch-penny publications, got up in great haste to meet the demand occasioned by the increasing celebrity of the Reformer Pontiff. They have both had a considerable sale in Rome - Roman energy and speculation not having been equal to the proAnd then at last the glaring fact is forced duction of any thing calculated to supply the upon the comprehension of the nation, and by same want. The first, by M. Clavé, is the betthem set nakedly before their monarch-thatter of the two, and contains some amusing anecthe functions of royalty and priesthood are incompatible in an age of progress; that if the nation is to advance on the path of improvement the same man cannot be Pope and King; that the State and the Church must be two, and reciprocally independent. And for this the Roman people are accused of being ungrateful to their Pontiff. We can with confidence undertake to say that the Roman people have not been deficient in gratitude to their ruler. The reverse has been most strikingly the case, as can be testified by any attentive observer who has been in Rome for the last few months. The difficulty has been shuffled over, but it has not been got rid of. It will occur again ere long; and it will argue no ingratitude on the part of the Romans, that it will become clearly impossible for such an union of Church and State to continue. The force of events will push the Pontiff to the brink of that precipice from which he must voluntarily throw himself if he would not be violently thrust down. The temporal power of the Papacy seems no longer possible in Rome. And nothing but the gratitude and affection of the Romans for Pius the Ninth could have preserved the empty semblance of it even thus far. The Pope may perhaps preserve his tottering temporal power. The Papacy may renounce her old and natural alliance with despotism. In Italy and elsewhere she may take democracy to her arms; a large secular advantage she may thus secure, but can she secure it without a larger damage to her purely spiritual character, author. dotes of the early life of Mastai Ferretti. The third work mentioned is merely a sort of Roman red book, and is remarkable only as showing the almost incredible number of attendants, officials, and functionaries attached to the Papal Court, and the inextricable labyrinth of its endless multiplication and division of tribunals, courts, and jurisdictions of all sorts. - North British Review. LEAP-FROG.-I must relate the circumstances of my first introduction to the learned professor Cramer, since they were truly original. He had a country-house in the suburbs, and when I called to pay my respects, I was told I should find him in bis garden. I heard the sound of laughter and merry voices as I approached, and saw an elderly gentleman bent forwards in the middle of a walk, while several boys were playing leap-frog over him; a lady who stood by him said, as soon as she perceived me, Cramer, Steffens is there." "Well," he said, without moving, "leap, then." I was delighted with the new mode of introduction to a man of science, took my leap clean over him, and then turned round to make my bow and compliments. He was delighted, and as my good leap also won the hearts of the young people, I was at once admitted as an acquaintance in the happy circle. Notwithstanding this quaint reception, Cramer was a man of deep reflection, with all the quiet manner of a true philosopher.- Steffens' Adventures. |