e is the daughter of an
English clergyman, and very highly connected in England. You have enough
of the story to see the kind of plot regularly carried on. What they
expected to gain by passing her off upon us, we cannot tell, unless that
they wished to know earlier and more fully our movements. There is an
English pervert here just now,--a weak fool, but an educated one,--on a
mission to Geymonat's people, to assure them that they have committed a
great sin. Having proved both systems of religion, he can judge, and
there is no comfort whatever in the Protestant. He has taken up his
abode here, and is prosecuting his mission vigorously.

"A traveller passing through Genoa, and visiting the churches,
particularly on a feast-day, would fancy that the Genoese, or, indeed,
the Catholics in Sardinia generally, are the most devoted Catholics in
Italy. Many have gone away with that impression. The reason is this. All
who attend the churches in Genoa do so from choice,--from religious
motives; and even feel, in these days of heresy, that they are wearing
the martyr's crown,--standing firmly for the true Church, while all
without are scoffers; whereas in the Tuscan, Roman, and Neapolitan
States, people attend church from compulsion. If they are not in church
on certain days, and at mass, they are immediately suspected. I believe
the male population of Italy is one moving mass of infidelity. Sardinia
is professedly so. In Genoa not one young man in a hundred attends
church. If you see him there, it is to select a pretty woman for his own
purposes. Morality is at a very low ebb,--lower far than you can have
any idea of. Every man is sighing after his neighbour's wife; and he
confesses it, and talks as gallantly of his conquest as if he had fought
on the heights of Alma. A stranger walking the streets in the evening
would not suppose this, for he would not be attacked, as in a town in
Britain; but they have their dens, and licensed ones too. Shocking as it
may appear, these houses are regularly licensed by the Government; and
medical men visit them once every week for sanitary purposes. The
defilement of the marriage-bed is little or nothing thought of. Marriage
here is generally a money speculation, and is very frequently brought
about through means of regular brokers or agents, who receive a per
centage on the bride's dowry. A woman without a pretty good dowry has
very little chance of a husband, unless she is young and very prett