A NATIVE OF IRELAND, FORMERLY ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST, AND AUTHOR OF "POPERY AS IT IS, "AURICULAR CONFESSION,"

ITALY AS IT WAS AND AMERICA AS IT

MAY BE.

"Babylon the mighty is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." Rev. 18:2.

The Italy of the monks and of the popes is truthfully described in these words of the great revelator.

Beautiful for situation, embracing 100,000 square miles (being in size about equal to New England and New York), if her peoplewere Christianized, she would be the joy of the whole earth. Alas, sin has reigned there. Rome-with its wolfish progenitor, which suckled Romulus and Remus, and with its robber character, won because, there, fair young maidens invited as guests were captured and made wives-finds in its early history a prophecy of its future. Whoever has gazed upon her hills and vales, covered with villasand vineyards; her plains, fruitful and cultivated; her palaces, attesting to the wealth, the genius and the taste of men whose fame: fills history, obtains a conception of what Italy might have been had not paganism and Romanism, which is paganism revived and baptized, taken out of her that healthful life and filled her with all unrighteousness and wickedness, envy and murder. Assassination and suicide were the portion of the rulers; the people were left the prey to cruelty and robbery.

In the past, on almost every delightful eminence, where every prospect pleases and only man is vile, stood monastery and convent, like birds of prey, and casting shadows dread and drear over what otherwise would be transcendently beautiful. Monks with their coarse habits, nuns with their black veils, tell of everything but the free spirit of the gospel of love. From dawn to dark they have gone; the night is black where Rome spreads the pall. We cannot realize it unless we have seen it. Take faith in the Lord Jesus Christ out of a community and you subtract its power and

leave a residue of men without the life of God. In this land it is difficult to understand it. Here are freedom and recklessness. We are afraid of neither pope nor devil. No martyr's pile can be placed, up to now, across the path of the devout. It was not so in Italy. Persecutions the worst, the most cruel, have characterized the land and the city nearest to and most under control of the pope. Justice fell in the streets. Those who loved Christ in spirit and in truth had been banished the realm. Some had gone direct to God through the open door of a martyr's death. Others had journeyed by slower stages, through exile and through sorrow. But in Italy there were few, prior to 1870, who knew and loved the Lord.

The history of Rome dates back to April 21, 763 B. C. Rome had kings for nearly two hundred fifty years. The seventh and last was Tarquin the Proud, dethroned 510 B. C. in consequence of his cruel tyranny and the violence offered by his son Sextus to the virtuous and beautiful Lucretia. The Roman Republic lasted five hundred years, when it gave place to the Roman Empire, under Augustus Cæsar. The story of the reign of the Cæsars still fills the world with surprise and wonder. Julius Cæsar was made military tribune 69 B. C. He at once engaged in wars that extended the bounds of the empire not only through France, but into Germany and Britain. His term of government was extended years, and Pompey became his rival. In spite of the veto of the tribunes, January 6, 49 B. C., Mark Antony and Quintus Cassius passed a decree commanding Cæsar to lay down his arms and resign his military power. Cæsar crossed the Rubicon, and, on April 1, entered Rome in triumph. Two years later he was assassinated in the senate house by Brutus.

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Caius Octavius, son of Cæsar's sister Julia, was declared heir by Cæsar's will, and by adroit management won the victory over all his enemies. He closed the gates of the Temple of Janus ten years before the birth of our Saviour, and kept them closed for two years after that wonderful event took place. Then followed Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, who was on the throne in the days of Paul, and Nero, by whom Paul was put to death. For three hundred years Italy was full of cruelty, of persecution and hate.

Christians contended for the faith and went to the fagot and the cross because of their love. In 305 Constantine, proclaimed