acy. There is in the Pope's kirk, then, a power greater than
the Pope. The system has taken body and shape, as it were, and sits upon
the Seven Hills, a mysterious, awe-inspiring divinity or demon; and the
Pope, equally with the friar, bows his head and does obeisance. Wherever
the pontiff looks,--whether backward into history, or around him in the
world,--there are the monuments of this ever living, ever present, and
all pervading power. It requires more force than the mind of fallen man
is capable of, to believe that a system which has filled history with
its deeds and the world with its trophies, which has compelled the
homage of myriads and myriads of minds, and before which the haughtiest
conquerors and the most puissant intellects have bowed with the docility
of children, is, after all, an unreality,--a mere spectre of the middle
ages,--a ghost conjured up by credulity and knavery from the tombs of
defunct idolatries. This, I say, is the true state of things in Italy.
Its priesthood are subdued by their own system,--by its high claims to
antiquity,--its world-wide dominion,--its imposing though faded
magnificence,--its perverted logic,--its pseudo sanctity. These not only
carry it over the reason, but in some degree over the senses also; and
the more fully persuaded the priests are of the truth and divinity of
their system, they feel only the more fully warranted to employ fraud
and force in its support,--the winking Madonna to convince one class,
and the dungeon and the iron chain to silence the other.

Having spoken of the abstract and spiritual power that reigns over
Italy, and, I may say, over the whole Catholic world, let me now speak
of the corporeal and human machinery by which the Papacy is carried on.

First comes the Pope. Pio Nono is a man of sixty-three. His years and
the various misfortunes of his reign sit lightly upon him. Were the Pope
much given to reflection, there are not wanting unpleasant topics enough
to darken the clear Italian sunlight, as it streams in through the
windows of the Vatican palace. Once was he chased from Rome; and now
that he is returned, can he call Rome his own? Not he. The real master
of Rome is the commandant of the French garrison. And while outside the
walls are the dead whom he slew with the sword of France, inside are the
living, whose sullen scowl or fierce glare he may see through the French
files, as he rides out of an afternoon.[9] But Pio Nono takes all in
good p