gs--Others
convinced of the Falsehood of that Church, but lack Courage or
Opportunity to leave it--Making Allowance for all these Classes,
the Majority of Priests do believe in their System--The Explanation
of this--The real Ruler in the Church of Rome, not the Pope, nor
the Cardinals, nor the Jesuits, but the System--Human
Machinery--The Pontiff--The College of Cardinals--Antonelli--The
Bishops and Priests--The Jesuits--Their Activity and Importance at
Rome--Their Appearance described.

When an Englishman visits the Eternal City, he is very apt, during the
first days of his sojourn, to underrate the power and influence of the
Papal system. At home he has been used to see power associated with
splendour, and surrounded with the fruits and monuments of intelligence.
At Rome everything on which he sets his eye bears marks of a growing
barbarism and decay. Outside the walls of the city is a vast desert,
attesting the utter extinction of industry. Within is an air of
stagnation and idleness, which bespeaks the utter absence of all mental
activity. A very considerable portion of the population have no
occupation but begging. The naked heads, necks, and feet of the monks
and friars are offensive from want of cleanliness. The higher
ecclesiastics even are coarse and vulgar men. The fine monuments reared
by the taste and wealth of former ages want keeping. Their churches,
despite the paintings and statuary with which they are filled, are
rendered disagreeable by the beggars that haunt them, and the incense
that is continually burned in them. Their very processions do not rise
above a tawdry half-barbaric grandeur; and one must be far gone in the
Puseyite malady before such exhibitions can inspire him with anything
like reverence. The visitor looks around on this strange scene, so
unlike what his imagination had pictured, and exclaims, "Where and in
what lies the secret of this city's power?" Here there is neither art,
nor industry, nor wealth, nor knowledge! Here all the bodily and all the
mental faculties of man appear to be folded up in a worse than mediaeval
stupor. Where are the elements of that power for which this city is
renowned, and by which she is able to thwart and control the civilized
and powerful Governments of the north of Europe? Would, says he to
himself, that those who venerate Rome when divided from her by the Alps
and the ocean, would come here and see with their own