e earth, and joined, I doubt not, albeit
disowned as a heretic in the city in which he laboured, "the General
Assembly and Church of the first-born" on high.

I have already mentioned that the priests boast that the Pope could say
mass in a different church every day of the year. Nevertheless there is
next to no preaching in Rome. In Italy they convert men, not by
preaching sermons, but by giving them wafers to swallow,--not by
conveying truth into the mind, but by lodging a little dough in the
stomach. Hence many of their churches stand on hill-tops, or in the
midst of swamps, where not a house is in sight. During my sojourn of
three weeks, I heard but two sermons by Roman preachers. I was
sauntering in the Forum one day, when, observing a little stream of
paupers--(how could such go to the convents to beg if they did not go to
sermon?)--flowing into the church of San Lorenzo, I joined in the
procession, and entered along with them. At the door was a tin-box for
receiving contributions for erecting a temple in London, where "their
poor destitute fellow-countrymen might hear the true gospel." Were these
"destitute fellow-countrymen" in Rome, the Pope would find accommodation
for them in some one of his dungeons; but with the English Channel
between him and them, he builds with paternal care a church for their
use. We doubt not the exiles will duly appreciate his kindness. Every
twentieth person or so dropped a little coin into the box as he passed
in. A knot of some one or two hundreds was gathered round a wooden
stage, on which a priest was declaiming with an exuberance of vehement
gesture. On the right and left of him stood two hideous figures, holding
candles and crucifixes, and enveloped from head to foot in sackcloth.
They watched the audience through two holes in their masks; and I
thought I could see a cowering in that portion of the crowd towards
which the muffled figures chanced for the time to be turned. I felt a
chilly terror creeping over me as the masks turned their great goggle
eyes upon me; and accordingly withdrew.

The regular weekly sermon in Rome is that preached every Sabbath
afternoon in the church of the Jesuits. This church is resplendent
beyond all others in the Eternal City, in marbles and precious stones,
frescoes and paintings. Here, too, in magnificent tombs, sleep St
Ignatius, the founder of the order, and Cardinal Bellarmin, one of the
"Church's" mightiest champions. Its ample roof might c