are political tyrants. Let it not be supposed that our purpose is the abuse of the Romish Church; our object is merely to delineate the actual condition of Italy, of which that Church is a marked manifestation. The Roman Catholic religion, adapting itself to the varying requirements of age and country, becomes, in its changing phases-in its greater purity, on the one hand, or, on the other, in the demoralisation of its priesthood and the corruption of its public functions-a sure index of a people's rise or fall. Thus in free, sober, and rational England, we have no miracles, few images; the ceremonies are earnest and decorous, and the priests well-conducted. Even in France and Germany, for the most part, we find a temperate and seemly moderation. And it is only when we cross the Pyrenees to enter Spain, or the Alps to descend into Italy, that we find the Roman Catholic religion sunk into the lowest depths, in order to conform itself to the ignorance and fanaticism of the people. The Church in both these countries panders to the passions, ranks poverty and mendicity among the virtues; in the indolence of the monastic orders, sets the example of universal idleness; and by an uneducated priesthood, gives sanction to ignorance in the people. Thus the dominant failings and faculties in the Italian mind find justification and excitement in the Italian religion. Imagination wanders through the fancy fable of legendary creation, or wings its flight to the heavenly hierarchy of saints and angels. The sensuous faculties delight in a religion reduced to pictorial form, intense in colour, dramatic in effect. Architecture inspires to worship; sculpture carves fitting images; and music, which is the speaking tongue to her mute sister arts, bears the believer's prayer to heaven. Now it cannot be doubted that this ornate and sensuous ritual is consonant with the wants and impulses of the Italian character-a character pre-eminently imaginative, passionate, and artistic. If indeed the Italian religion were content to make merely this high appeal to the poetry and ardour of the southern mind, we should see in the Church no indecorous condescension, and in the people no degrading prostration. But the accommodation to human weakness does not stop here. The arts, we regret to say, are employed not so much to raise the soul to heaven, as to bring down heaven to the low level of earth. A" Holy Family" by Raphael is found to exert less spell upon the multitude, than an image doll decked in embroidered silks and satins, with gewgaw ornaments dazzling round head and neck. The miraculous pictures and images of the churches are not the miracles of art and of genius, but some Byzantine Madonna daubed by St Luke, some deformed abortion too disgraceful to be owned by any painter on earth, and therefore said to have fallen from heaven. Thus is art perverted and religion corrupted to that level where both find themselves suited to the depraved palate of an Italian multitude. Religious competition of course leads to still grosser excess; the desire to propitiate and gain over the masses urges each church to outbid its rival neighbour by the éclat of some new miracle, the efficacy of some gifted relic-cure. Thus rival saints, as jealous theatric stars, compete for favour by programmes of unparalleled attractions, and thus the Italian heaven is readily peopled as the pit of an Italian theatre by the riff-raff, who in other countries would simply be consigned to jail. What wonder, then, that the Italian Church, appealing to such prospective saints, should march them heavenwards to the tramp of noisy dramatic and dogmatic music, drive them to paradise by the fear of penal fires, and that the house of God, the symbol of the New Jerusalem, should be gaudily decorated as a ball-room or casino? All this, it would appear, is needful, in order that an Italian may be saved in his own way, and thus, after running riot in this world, find in the next a knave's paradise open to receive him. These things, though to minds enlightened intolerable, it would seem, must still be tolerated: sweep them away, the foundations of all things are shaken-you may be drowned in a deluge or swallowed by an earthquake: call in question the miracle of San Januarius, and the Lazaroni will be let loose. And not only this, but worse still," our craft is in danger to be set at nought," and "the temple of the great goddess Diana," ""the image which fell down from Jupiter," will be despised, and her magnificence destroyed," whom all Asia and the world worshippeth." Touch these things, then, at your peril. Our ritual and Church ceremonies may be but a cunningly devised fable, but we are wise in our generation, we know too well what the Italian people require-we but give them what they call for. To the populace of Naples the liquefaction of the blood of San Januarius is of more vital concern than the granting or the withdrawal of a political constitution. The king can take away with impunity the rights and the liberties of his subjects, but at least their superstitions must remain sacred and intact. Governors and conquerors of this people have found it wise to call to their aid these tricks of the priests; and thus the miracle has obtained not only tacit respect, but incoming generals, wishing to add spiritual sanction to military power, have demanded of the saint the intervention of a special liquefaction. Priests and governors know but too well when and how to pander to the superstition of the people. Punchinello and San Januarius are equally popular pets-the multitude love the one as they laugh at the other; and thus, while feats are performed in the theatres and miracles enacted in the churches, the populace rejoice in their most sacred rights, and enjoy their dearest privileges. As already said, our purpose is not to condemn the Romish Church as a system of theology; this is beyond our office. Moreover, whatever may be its corruptions, we know from personal experience that minds of the highest culture and aspiration find in the purer aspects of its faith the means for spiritual development. We therefore, in contrast, lay the greater stress on that spiritual prostitution which, in Italy, satiates its vicious passion by vulgar miracles disgraceful to the priesthood, and showing in the people the last stage of spiritual decay. We need scarcely say that the liquefaction of the blood is no solitary example. It is well known that the nations in the south of Europe are mentally so far sunk, that even Christianity, the means of salvation to man, is stamped with special degradation. God is banished from the world, or thrown so far into obscure distance as to become practically unknown. Christ, the image of the Godhead revealed to man, being of purer eyes than to behold the iniquity enacted on the earth, is not sufficiently human for the approach of sinning frailty. And thus a people shunning, instead of seeking access to the Divine, choose rather to pray to the Virgin, as to a woman who may be loved, to talk to their saint as to a brother whose kindness may be taxed, or to confess to a priest whose own infirmities would suggest leniency towards the sins of others. Accordingly we find that the religion of Italy is not the healthful and truthful aspiration of strong and manly minds towards heaven, but a mendicant's importunity for charity, a last refuge for destitution; the whining of prayers and the wailings of lamentations, instead of the performance of life's duties; the trusting to miracle, or supernatural intervention, rather than wrestle resolutely with the world's difficulties. Nations, on the other hand, which have the earnestness and energy of a national existence, live out their religion in their individual and collective lives. But the national life of Italy being virtually extinct, no great or valorous enterprises stirring the energies of the people, prayers to saints take the place of public prowess, and instead of fêtes commemorative of national liberty, festas are instituted to the Madonna. In a national community hollow and untrue, where not art but artifice has usurped the place of nature, individual religion no less than national is severed from the life. Worship, as we have said, does not grow out from work, and works are practically severed from faith. The Italian life is generally a lie, and corresponds only with the worship when the worshipper, as usual, attempts to secure heaven by spiritual fraud. It is a life out of which only a false re ligion can proceed. Truth has long been murdered, honesty trampled under foot, chastity openly violated. And yet the men who have conspired to deceive you through falsehood, were all at mass in the morning. The boatman on the Italian lake, or the gondolier on the canals of Venice, picks your pocket, then moors his boat, and forthwith falls upon his knees to render to Heaven thanks. And the woman who has just violated her marriage-vow sighs away her soul in prayers, in the words, " Mater purissima, Mater castissima." We have said that in Italy religion in its purity is severed from the life; but, on the other hand, we equally see that religion, as now corrupted, is part of the common corruption of Italian manners. It is frequently, as we have already said, asserted that the degeneracy of the Italian people results from the tyranny of the governments and the oppression and superstition of the priests. We have, however, already shown that the governments of Italy are but the natural concomitants to the people of Italy; and the reader will now, we think, be prepared for the conclusion already anticipated, that Romanism, in all its rank corruptions and rampant extravagance, is indigenous to the soil; while Protestantism, of foreign nurture, may possibly be transplanted as an exotic or thrust in as an alien, but can never in that land take deep root or find an abiding home. What charm can the boasted truth of Protestantism possess to an Italian who deems truth, even in discourse, prosaic and slow, and in life an impediment to success? What sway can Protestant reason hold over a people uncontrolled by reason, just in proportion as they are guided by imagination and misled by passion? What authority can the enthroned conscience of the Protestant exert over a people who have already dethroned conscience, and now, in lieu thereof, rejoice in a confession-granted freedom, which the priest gives and himself enjoys, What bribe is the Protestant Bible to minds which love rather the fiction and romance of legends What spell can Protestant simplicity exert over imaginations which revel in ornate decoration, the vestment of priests, the instru mental clash of an operatic orchestra, and the theatric pomp of an imposing ritual? The religion of the north is suited to northern sternness, and the chill of a northern climate, but cannot pass the southern boundaries of the Alps and the Pyrenees. The lands of the olive and of the vine, of Ceres and of Bacchus, are doomed, we fear, to revel in a religion of festas and of orgies. These are the grounds why we distrust any radical projects which pretend to make the Papacy in Rome conformable to the enlightened system of modern government. The secular ministers will find themselves thwarted by the ecclesiastical. The Pope can always put his veto upon reforms which may possibly threaten his position, compromise his Church, or involve what might seem for himself or his order a perilous progress. In such opposition he need not stand alone. His cardinals, and indeed all the dignitaries of the Church, would readily offer him a willing support. The cry that the Church was in danger, would raise throughout Italy horror among the faithful. Every parish priest would evoke all spiritual power to oppose the innovation of the secular authorities. The pulpit, the confessional, and the right of extreme unction, would become instruments for the continued maintenance of abuses and political iniquities which had long been wedded as inseparable from the theological dogma and practice of the Church. Thus is it that we hold that even the reforms in the papal administration which may be found practicable, will be but an unhappy compromise between elements in themselves incompatible, and that, in fine, the papal government must ever remain as an obstinate resistance to the innovations and appliances of modern civilisation. If our knowledge of Italy make us sceptical of religious reformation, intercourse with the people has beually destroyed our faith in their capacity for political administration or national union. The times are inimical to the political existence of which Italy during the middle ages was the great example. The isolated and rival freedom of individual cities, walled in to withstand the ambitious or marauding attack either of emperor or predatory bands, has, in the existing state of Europe, become either unnecessary or impossible. The bandit type of freedom, the prowling about in quest of adventure, the freebooting kind of commerce which was content to pay with money only for that which could not be taken by the sword, is now, in the more consolidated state of Europe, no longer recognised nor reputable. The days in which one city republic armed itself against its neighbour city, when a noble family sought to crush a rival house in open battle, when faction raged in the public streets, and liberty was a tumultuous struggle these days, associated with the greatness, the freedom, and the genius of Italy, are ended. Days illumined by lightning, yet black with the thunder-cloud, are now for Europe succeeded by serener light, and for Italy by obscurity. In those ancient days, political creation was contending against chaos, the free governments of the middle ages were framing themselves out of the anarchy and wreck of the Roman Empire. These periods of tumultuous excess, of spasmodic effort, and passionate struggle, have now, for the rest of Europe, reached the more settled season of mature development; but for Italy their glory is still remembered, and their tumult still heaves in the unallayed troubles of the nation. The remembrance of these days of now-departed greatness we have often deemed a present curse upon the people. Impotent to imitate or emulate what they so fondly dote on, their lives are wasted in vague and visionary aspirations, their energies directed towards futile and ambitious efforts. Fired by their past history, this people deem themselves endowed by perennial genius; national independence, if not universal empire, they think their due; and thus aspiring to a height far above their reach, they despise the humble virtues lying at their feet, and neglect those ameliorating means which yet might save them. Thus doting so fondly on the glory of their historic past, and filled with the visions of an impossible future, they dwell either in memory or imagination, and neglect the duties of the present hour. The recollection of their prior state of glory would seem to give the assuring intimation, as the remembered brighter life fabled by some philosophers, of their national immortality. Greatness, they would seem to say, is our birthright and inheritance, from which, through the jealousy of rival powers, we have been unjustly ousted. Thus laden with all the most taking topics of eloquence-thus incited by injury, despair, and yet hope-these people hold forth in the endless talk of exhaustless extempore with a Lamartine facility of words, while, with a Lamartine frailty in action, a stronger arm wields the sword-a sterner hand bears the sceptre. The existing state of Europe, and the present aspect of civilisation, are, as we have said, undoubtedly adverse to the genius, no less than to the frailty of Italy. Words even the most eloquent have now comparatively little sway. Even in England, where liberty of parliamentary speech has found safe asylum, eloquence, it is well known, has become subordinate to mere business statements; clear, close facts supplanting rhetorical display. In the rest of Europe, liberty of the press and freedom of speech being suppressed, eloquence of course becomes a useless instrument in governments reduced to simple administration and military command. The times, we say, are unfortunate for Italy. Statesmen who can write a sonnet-politicians who are favourably known by a volume of romances-dilettante dabblers who can paint an ambitious yet indifferent picture, or write a graceful criticism on church architecture or church music, are not the men to take the helm in difficult times-to avenge a people's wrongs, to throw off despotic yoke, or curb the passions of a turbulent_democracy. In the present state of Europe power falls into sterner hands. Cavaignac as a Cromwell, supplanted Lamartine the poet and orator; and Napoleon, both uncle and nephew, with firm hand put a summary end to the promise and ambition of revolutionary genius; swept away with bayonet and shot the theorists and litterateurs who, with accustomed fatal facility, could indite with equal ease a literary leader or a political constitution, but were impotent to govern and control the very liberty whose genius they had invoked. In the present aspect of Europe the executive power has almost annihilated constitutional elements. The executive soldier has well-nigh supplanted even the deliberative statesman, and the politicat schemer and patriotic aspirant obtain no hearing. Dearly bought experience has overthrown baseless and visionary theories; facts are stronger than political fiction; the enactors of plain prose have conquered the mere dreamers of poetry. And therefore, as we have said, the times are hostile to the special genius of Italy. Europe is willing to receive from Italy opera-singers and ballet - dancers, and in return supplies her with governors and military troops. The greatness and the glory of Italian history, which patriots and even an Emperor invoke, we again repeat, have descended upon the present day as an actual curse. The former genius of the Italian people, even in art, has now degenerated to the painting of pictures, imbecile just in proportion as they are ambitious; to sculpture without fire or force, more suited to the softness of wax than to the severity of marble; and to music noisy and empty, a luxury to the senses, a fit accompaniment to the dance or to flirtation in the boxes of the opera. Thus their present art is the enfeebled and dying pulse of the genius which once beat so strongly, even as their present patriot-thirst for liberty is the last ebbing of that tumultuous tide which broke in so grandly upon the rugged shores of the middle ages. The degraded and disorganised state of Italy in the present must be read through the history of Italy in the past. Existing anomalies can only be reconciled by the fact, that Italy in her actual fall manifests her former characteristics in that last stage of decay which borders on extinction. Thus, as we have seen, the arts, though still true to their former land of birth, are piteously gasping between life and death; and the very characteristics of former genius have now degen now 66 erated into pretentious defects. So likewise is it with Italy politically. The present is a transcript of the past, but only as a parody or burlesque. The conflicts between the rival republics of the middle ages, which were signs of earnest active life, survive now only as petty jealousies. The historic virtues have died out the national vices only are immortal. The traveller finds no longer the energy and heroism, but only the ancient hatred and former rivalry. An Italian from Piedmont will say, Oh, such a one is a Milanese; what better can you expect?" A man from Modena will thank God that he does not dwell in Bologna, that den of assassins and rebels. And the Italian from the north, when he visits the south, inveighs against the roguery of the Neapolitan. This discordant disunion, verging even upon social dissolution, is found only in Italycertainly not in England, France, or in any other nation worthy or capable of a united government. Thus Italy, true to her past history, is a country divided against herself-a country of opposing factions, rival townships, hostile interests, and warring prejudices. Often have we heard it said, by men resident among the people, were Italy to conquer her independence, a civil war only could decide which state or family should govern, and which city should be capital of the newly enfranchised nation. And yet, by an anomaly and contradiction somewhat startling, even when coming from Italy, just in proportion as one patriot is ready to betray or stab his brother, do the great apostles and leaders insist on the unity of their party and the oneness of their cause. Thus Mazzini, the firebrand of Italy, the fomenter of deadly feud between his own "national party" and the party of the constitution in Piedmont, speaks as follows: "The future Italy, the one nation, is a fact inevitable, and not long to be delayed." Yet this same Mazzini stabs the political reputation of the patriot Daniel Manin, heaps opprobrium upon the reigning house and King of Sardinia, and then in turn falls himself under the castigation of the assassin Orsini. Such feuds among |