ve the Collegio Romano as
learned as they entered it. The higher priesthood are educated at the
_Sapienza_, where, I believe, a thorough training in theological
dialectics is given.

It is impossible not to see that the Italians are a people of quick
perceptions, lively sensibilities, and warm and kindly dispositions; but
it is just as impossible not to see that they are deplorably untaught.
The stranger is mortified to find that he knows far more of their ruins
and of their past history than they themselves do. The peasant wanders
over the huge mounds that diversify the Seven Hills, or traverses the
Appian, or passes under the arch of Titus, without knowing or caring who
erected these structures, or having even a glimmering of the heroic
story in which they were, so to speak, the actors. When he looks back
into the past, all is night. Nowhere is Rome so little known as in Rome
itself. How different was it when the Pope received Italy! Then Italy
occupied the van of civilization. And when the Byzantine empire fell,
and the scholars of the East fled westward, carrying with them the rich
treasures of the Greek language and literature, learning had a second
morning in Italy. Famous colleges arose, to which the youth of Europe
repaired. Philosophers and poets of imperishable name shed a lustre upon
the country; but the Roman Church soon discovered that Italy was
acquiring knowledge at the expense of its Romanism, and she applied the
band to the national mind. And now that same Italy that once held aloft
the lamp of knowledge to the world is herself in darkness, and, sad
sight! is seen, with quenched orbs, groping about in the midnight.

And yet proofs are not wanting to show that, were the interdict of the
Church taken off, Italy would at once throw herself into the race, and
might soon rival the most successful of her contemporaries. Most of my
readers, I doubt not, are familiar with the name of M. Leone Levi, now
engaged on the great work of the codification of the commercial laws of
the three kingdoms, and their assimilation to the continental codes. The
fact I am now to state, and which speaks volumes as regards the efforts
of "the Church" to educate Italy, I had from this gentleman; and to
those who know him, any testimony of mine to his intelligence and
uprightness is superfluous. M. Leone Levi, an Italian Jew, was born at
Ancona, but eventually settled in England. During the Roman Republic, he
paid a visit to Italy.