ing
enormous exaggeration in the common report of the conduct of the
younger priesthood and the students of the theological schools (and
there is no smoke without some fire), the conditions of morality
amongst the younger Italian clergy was a gross scandal. Houses of
ill-fame were notorious, and it used to be said that when Pius IX. was
urged by the French authorities to put them under control and license
he replied that "every house was a brothel, and it was useless to
license any." There was another saying which I heard often, that "if
you wanted to go to a brothel you must go in the daytime, for at night
they were full of priests." How far this was justified I do not know,
but I remember that two American acquaintances went one night to one
of the best recognized houses of the kind, a place of the most common
notoriety on the Corso, and they were told at the door that there was
no room,--"every place was occupied."

Let me not be charged with making of this state of things an
accusation against the Catholic religion. The English, Irish, and
American students, who were those with whom I principally came in
contact, were ardent and enthusiastic devotees, as earnest in their
religious observances as any of the most devoted members of any other
church I have known. Indeed, it is my personal experience that so far
as regards the younger men, I have never found so many animated by the
true apostolical spirit as amongst the students of theology of British
and American birth whom I then knew at Rome. At the head of all the
Catholics of all nations whom I have ever known are the English, in
respect of sincere and ardent devotion to their church, with the
minimum of animosity towards other creeds, and the most healthy
morality. With the great majority of Italian ecclesiastics, on the
contrary, religion is a mere formality, and its influence on the life
is inconsiderable and unconsidered. It was, therefore, not because it
was a Catholic city that the morality of Rome was so low, but because
the energies of the hierarchy were so occupied with the difficulties
of the position of a government of priests unused to civil
administration and by their own education disqualified for it, that
the ordinary functions of government were impossible to it. The
situation was made still worse by the Italian constitutional
indifference to questions of common morality. As the government of the
church lies in the hands of the Italian clergy, it w