on the City. But the same facilities which we now possess for relieving distress did not exist in those days, and the Jews of the Ghetto, then as now, the principal sufferers, would probably have received less attention than the rest, even if they were not looked upon as a race accursed of heaven, and deserving of all that they endured. The stones recording the flood, placed by order of the Pope, were destroyed, as I have said, along with his other monuments by the infuriated populace. It is for this reason that the date of 1557 is omitted in the scale of heights at the corner house in the Via di Ripetta. After some time the Dominican monks of the convent of the Minerva, who naturally cherished the memory of Paul, as a member of their order, and an ardent asserter of their principles, caused the present tablet to be affixed on the outside wall, and inscribed with the following wretched

verse:

Huc Tiber ascendit Paulus dum Quartus in anno
Terno ejus rector maximus orbis erat.

To this point the Tiber rose whilst Paul the fourth
In his third year was greatest ruler of the globe.

PIUS V. AND THE TIBER, 66-72.

In Bonini we meet with the following strange account. During an inundation which occurred in the Pontificate of Pius V. the Pope took an Agnus Dei (a waxen image impressed with the figure of a lamb, and consecrated by the Pope, to be distributed to the faithful) and directed an Archbishop, one of his intimate friends, to cast it into the Tiber, where the swell of the river was greatest. "When this had been done, in a moment the river bowed its head, and with rapid strides abandoned the city, and hastened, like a guilty person, to plunge into the waves of the Tyrrhenian sea." "The man," Bonini adds, "that could subdue the pride of the Tiber was able to accomplish even greater things." This refers to the part which the Pope took against the Turks, and to the victory of Lepanto. The object nearest to the heart of Pius was to humble the pride of the Turks, and secure Christendom against their attacks. By unwearied exertions he succeeded in infusing courage unto the Christian Princes, and formed a league of the Empire, the Venetians, and the States of the Church, to arrest the progress of the Infidels. The efforts of the Pope were crowned with success; the fleet of the allies, commanded by Don John of Austria, obtained a signal victory over the Turks, and the tide of invasion began from that time to ebb.* The victory of Pius over the Turks

* The Turks at that time had expelled the knights of St. John from Rhodes, had defeated and slain the last king of Hungary of the native line, and even laid siege to Vienna. They hung like a cloud over Europe, and though occasionally worsted, they were strong enough in 1683 to besiege Vienna for the second time, on which occasion the city was relieved by John Sobiesky. What a change in the relative strength of the two countries, when Austria, which 193 years ago was unable to defend herself against Turkey without foreign aid, is now deliberating in concert with Russia, how she shall dispose of the fragments of that once formidable Empire.

is known to every reader of History, but none but the readers of Bonini ever heard of his victory over the Tiber.

So foolish a story may seem unworthy of insertion in a serious treatise. But it is given as an illustration of the superstition of the Romans, and of the tendency of the human mind to seek for the explanation of a phenomenon in occult causes, or supernatural agencies, rather than in the uniform action of some known and general law. It also shows the worthlessness of popular testimony either to miracles, or facts in science, where no personal interests are involved, and where nobody has any motive for contradicting a story, however absurd it may be. The object of those from whom Bonini received his account was to make out a case for a miracle and to flatter a Pope. On the other hand, it was a matter of indifference to those who were not under the influence of superstition, whether a story which they disbelieved obtained currency or not. If this is true of relations which shock the reason by their absurdity, it is truer still of popular notions in Science and Natural History. An account of a phenomenon in Nature, or of the habits of an animal originating in superficial observation, or the love of the marvellous, is accepted by a few who will not give themselves the trouble to investigate its truth, is adopted by others on the credit of the first hearers, and propagated from individual to individual, and from generation to generation, until it becomes an article of popular faith. The universality of the opinion is then appealed to as a presumption of its truth, as if all the individuals who held it, had arrived at the same conclusion by independent observation, or a distinct process of reasoning.

In the reign of Sixtus V. no great inundation occurred. But what he saw, coupled with what he had heard, led him to form the design of curbing the insolence of the river, as he had by his stern measures of repression destroyed the banditti that used to infest the states of the church. The following is the language used in regard to Sixtus V. and the Tiber by the author Bonini: "Sixtus V. the most imperturbable of Pontiffs, and the scourge of wicked men and assassins, could

not fail to have an opportunity of seeing an inundation of the Tiber, since he was born only for great things, and among others to curb that river, which, like a public bravo, was wont to assassinate the city and Campagna of Rome." Two, though not of the first magnitude, which happened in the last year of his reign, gave him an opportunity of displaying his benevolence in relieving the distress of the people, and at the same time suggested to him the appointment of a commission to enquire into the causes of these inundations, and to consult upon the means of preventing them, so that in time to come the City should be secure. But death prevented him from carrying out his designs.

The terms in which the Tiber is spoken of in this passage may appear inconsistent with the respectful language which Bonini generally uses in speaking of the river, and which reveals a feeling still lingering in the Roman mind, like that which their forefathers entertained for their native stream. But the matter is regarded from Sixtus' point of view, whose practical mind was devoid equally of poetical sentiment and of reverence for antiquity. One who dismantled the Septizonium of Severus, and contemplated the destruction of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, is not likely to have cherished any superstitious feeling for a river, or to have been influenced by any other consideration than the best means of abating a nuisance.

INUNDATION OF 1598.

Whether Sixtus V. would have been as successful in dealing with the Tiber as with the brigands, is matter for speculation. But eight years after his death, and in the pontificate of Clement VIII., there occurred the greatest inundation of modern times, and equal, perhaps, to any of those which are recorded to have happened in the time of the Romans. For no measurement was given by the historians who describe them, and we have, therefore, no means of instituting a comparison. The event is thus noticed in the highest of the tablets attached to the building of the Minerva:

Anno Dom. MDXCVIII. 8, Cal. Jan.

Redux recepta Pontifex Ferraria
Non ante tam superbi hujusce Tybridis
Insanientes execratur vortices.

In the year of our Lord 1598, 25 Dec.

The Pontiff returning after the conquest of Ferraria

Curses the furious eddies of this our Tiber,

Which never before exhibited such pride.

Eight hundred persons are said to have been drowned, or to have perished by hunger, on this occasion. The Pons Emilius, which had been rebuilt by Julius III. and Gregory XIII. in place of the ancient structure, which had fallen down in the thirteenth century, was partially swept away. The broken portion, under the name of the Ponte Rotto, still remains, a picturesque object in a sketch, and an evidence of the force by which the ruin was effected. In the flowery language of Bononi "the woes and devastation of the city by the flood would have caused stones to weep," and an Italian of the time, called Guiseppe Castaglio, wrote a poem in Latin describing the destruction which it wrought.