be Catholic,
but which have only too plainly led the way, in the shameful career of
religious oppression. It excites them to persist, more boldly than ever,
in the work of persecution, and these governments execute its behests. God
will arise, some day, and, addressing the Protestant oppressor, he will
say to him: Thou hast sinned--grievously sinned; but the Catholic
governments, on all hands, have still more grievously sinned. _Majus
peccatum habent._"

ITALY--EDUCATION.

At the time of the Piedmontese invasion, there were in the city of Rome,
one hundred and sixty-eight colleges or public schools.

The number of schools was twenty thousand, whilst the whole population of
the city was two hundred and twenty thousand. The pupils are classed as
follows, according to the statistics of his Eminence the Cardinal-Vicar,
in 1870:

Students, boarding in seminaries and colleges: 703
Students, day scholars, gratuitously taught in the schools: 5,555
Students, day scholars, who paid a small fee: 1,603
Total: 7,941

Girls, boarding in _refuges_: 2,986
Girls, day scholars, gratuitously taught: 6,523
Girls, day scholars, who paid a small fee: 2,871
Total: 11,380

General total: 19,321

Thus, including the orphans of both sexes, at _St. Michael de Termini_ and
other asylums, pupils are in the proportion of one to ten inhabitants.
This is not inferior to Paris, and surpasses Berlin, so much spoken of as
a seat of education. This Prussian (now German capital) reckoned, in 1875,
only eighty-five thousand scholars for a population of nine hundred and
seventy-four thousand souls, or ten scholars to one hundred and fourteen
citizens. The Godless schools, established by the new rulers, have
impeded, only to a certain extent, the development given to education by
the Government of Pius IX. In the poorer quarters of the city some parties
have been either intimidated by the threats of the _Department of
Charity_, or gained by the offer of bounties to themselves and a
gratuitous breakfast to their children. But, generally, the people of Rome
still resist, and several Christian schools have considerably increased
since 1870, the number of their pupils. This is all the more remarkable,
as the ruling faction showed a strong determination to put an end entirely
to Christian education. By the end of 1873, the usurping government had
confiscated more than one hundred monasteries, convents, and other
establishments of public education. A Lyc