we are in an
ecclesiastical country. On the one hand, poverty is dear to God; on
the other, alms-giving is a deed of piety. If the Pope could make one
half of his subjects hold out their hands, and the other half put a
halfpenny into each extended palm, he would effect the salvation of an
entire people.

Mendicity, which lay sovereigns regard as an ugly sore in the State,
to be healed, is tended and watered as a fair flower by a clerical
government. Pray give something to yonder sham cripple; give to that
cadger who pretends to have lost an arm; and be sure you don't forget
that blind young man leaning on his father's arm! A medical man of my
acquaintance offered yesterday to restore his sight, by operating for
the cataract. The father cried aloud with indignant horror at the
proposal; the boy is a fortune to him. Drop an alms for the son into
the father's bowl; the Pope will let you into Paradise, of which he
keeps the keys.

The Romans themselves are not duped by their beggars. They are too
sharp to be taken in by these swindlers in misery. Still they put
their hands into their pockets; some from weakness or humanity, some
from ostentation, some to gain Paradise. If you doubt my assertion,
try an experiment which I once did, with considerable success. One
night, between nine and ten o'clock, I begged all along the Corso. I
was not disguised as a beggar. I was dressed as if I were on the
Boulevards at Paris. Still, between the Piazza del Popolo and the
Piazza di Venezia, I _made_ sixty-three baiocchi (about three
shillings). If I were to try the same joke at Paris, the
_sergents-de-ville_ would very properly think it their duty to walk me
off to the nearest police-station. The Pontifical Government
encourages mendicity by the protection of its agents, and recommends
it by the example of its friars. The Pontifical Government does its
duty.

Prostitution flourishes in Rome, and in all the large towns of the
States of the Church. The police is too paternal to refuse the
consolations of the flesh to three millions of persons out of whom
five or six thousand have taken the vow of celibacy. But in proportion
as it is indulgent to vice, it is severe in cases of scandal. It only
allows light conduct in women when they are sheltered by the
protection of a husband.[12] It casts the cloak of Japhet over the
vices of the Romans, in order that the pleasures of one nation may not
be a scandal to others. Rather than admit the ex