arous jargon of "substances" and "accidents" in
which that mystery is wrapped up. An initiation into these matters forms
the education of the Roman boy; and after he has been locked up in
school for a certain length of time, he is turned adrift, to begin the
usual aimless life of the Italian. It does not follow, because he has
been at school, that he can read. He is seldom taught his letters;
better not, lest in after life he should come in contact with books.
And, despite the vigilance of the censorship and the Index, bad books,
such as the Bible, are finding their way into the Roman States; and it
is better, therefore, not to entrust the people with the key of
knowledge; for nothing is so useless as knowledge under an infallible
Church. The matters which the Italian youth are taught they are taught
by rote. "Ignorance is the mother of devotion,"--a maxim sometimes
quoted with a sneer, but one which embodies a profound truth as regards
that kind of devotion which is prevalent at Rome.

I have seen estimates by Gavazzi and other Italians, of the proportion
who can read in the Roman States. It is somewhere about one in a
hundred. The reader will take the statement at what it is worth. I had
no means of testing its accuracy; but all my inquiries on the subject
led me to believe that the overwhelming majority cannot read. And where
is the use of learning one's letters in a land where there are no books;
and there are none that deserve the name in Rome. The book-stalls in
Italy are heaped with the veriest rubbish: the "Book of Dreams," "Rules
for Winning at the Lottery," "The Five Dolours of the Virgin," "Tracts
on the Miracles of the Saints," "Relations," professedly given by Christ
about his sufferings, and said to have been found in his sepulchre, and
in other places equally likely. At Rome, on the streets at least, where
all other kinds of rubbish are tolerated, even this rubbish is not
suffered to exist; for there, book-stalls I saw none. There are,
however, one or two miserable book-shops where these things may be had.

There was but one newspaper (so called, I presume, because it contained
no news) published in Rome at the time of my visit,--the _Giornale di
Roma_, which, I presume, still occupies the field alone. It contains a
daily list of the arrivals and departures (foreigners, of course, for
the gates of Rome never open to the Romans), the proclamations of the
Government, the days of the lottery, and such matter