ost sons and
brothers with an eye that will not pity, and a hand that will not spare.

CHAPTER XXVII.

EDUCATION AND KNOWLEDGE IN THE PAPAL STATES.

Education of a Roman Boy--Seldom taught his Letters--Majority of
Romans unable to Read--Popular Literature of Italy--- Newspaper of
the Roman States--Censorship of the Press--Studies in the Collegio
Romano--Rome unknown at Rome--Schools spring up under the
Republic--Extinguished on the Return of the Pope--Conversation with
three Roman Boys--Their Ideas respecting the Creator of the World,
Christ, the Virgin--Questions asked at them in the
Confessional--Religion in the Roman States--Has no
Existence--Ceremony mistaken for Devotion--Irreverence--The Six
Commands of the Church--Contrast betwixt the Cost and the Fruits of
the Papal Religion--Popular Hatred of the Papacy.

The influence of Romanism on trade, and industry, and justice, has been
less frequently a theme of discussion than its influence on knowledge.
While, therefore, I have dwelt at considerable length on the former, I
shall be very brief under the present head. I shall here adduce only a
few facts which I had occasion to see or hear during my stay in the
Papal States. The few schoolmasters which are found in Italy are not a
distinct class, as with us; they are priests, and mostly Jesuits. There
are three classes of catechisms used in the schools; the pupil beginning
with the lowest, and of course finishing off with the highest. But of
what subjects do these catechisms treat? A little history, one would
say, that the pupil may have some notion of what has been before him;
and a little geography, that he may know there are such things as land
and sea, and cities beyond, which he cannot see, shut up in Rome. With
us, the lowest amount of education that ever receives the name comprises
at least the three R's, as they are termed,--Reading, Writing, and
'Rithmetic. But these are far too mundane matters for a Jesuit to occupy
his time in expounding. The education of the Italian youth is a
thoroughly religious one, taking the term in its Roman sense. The little
catechisms I have spoken of are filled with the weightier matters of
their law,--the miracles wrought by the staff of this saint, the cloak
of that other, and the relics of a third; the exalted rank of the
Virgin, and the homage thereto appertaining; Transubstantiation, with
all the uncouth and barb