fabulous rate. Philip Antonelli was governor of
the bank; Louis Antonelli held another government
office; both were flanked by a troop of
monopolists selected by their brother the
cardinal secretary, and followed by an army of
millers, bakers, butchers, oil-merchants,
druggists, and farmers, all leagued together to lay
hands on every branch of commerce, and to close
it against all fair competition.

The opinion of the Roman people may be
learned from the fact that, for the last ten years,
the police have been obliged to employ
constables to protect the life of Count Philip
Antonelli, the governor of the bank, against the fury
of the population, who have been reduced, by
the avarice of his family, to the extremity of
misery and despair. Of the two gentlemen who
put their signatures to the edict approving the
Bank of Rome, beside the Pope's, one, Clement
Giovanardi, who drew up the document, was
afierwards condemned at Bologna for fraud and
forgery, and was consequently put under lock
and key in the prisons of Imola. The other,
Monsignor Galli, minister of finance, had a
different fate. He was allowed to retire, after a
long course of dishonesty, with a certificate of
good service and a liberal pension; they bought
his silence at the expense of the state.

Not to mention greater integrity, great
outward decency is not to be expected from
officials selected out of an ecclesiastical body
who allow themselves such exhibitions as the
following. Santa Maria Maggiore is one of the
three patriarchal basilicas, and possesses some
eighty clerical members in the shape of priests,
incumbents, and canons, the latter of whom are
almost all prelates. If any one wishes to form
an idea of the moral condition of these clergymen,
let him remain in the basilica during the
performance of divine service. At the sound of
the bell, he will see eight or ten persons clad in
diverse ways, the majority wearing the brown
hood, the others hoods of ermine, proceed
from a room whose vestiges of ancient splendour
denote it to be the sacristy, for he would never
suspect the fact from the conduct of people who
advance gesticulating warmly and conversing in
a loud tone of voice. Are they discussing some
abstract question of transcendental theology?
Nothing of the kind. The Book of Dreams, the
drawing of the lottery, and their neighbours'
unsuccessful love affairs, are topics which interest
them much more.

If it is the hour for the evening Psalms, there
will always be found amongst these individuals
some one who has just left the Temple of
Bacchus, and whose fiery face will bear marks of the
favours of the merry god. On reaching the
choir, which is the place for the chanting of
the sacred canticles, they will not the more for
that assume a more decent and reserved
behaviour; neither the presence of God, in which
their profession requires them to believe, nor
any respect for the presence of men, will put a
stop to their conversation or compel them to
the observance of decent conduct. Psalmody is
a sublime institution destined to the adoration of
the Deity and the edification of our fellow-creatures;
but when the sanctity of the spot and
the ministry—when all religious vocation and
the real intention of the ceremony—are forgotten,
it sinks to the level of material routine and
mechanical labour.

During the services at Santa Maria Maggiore,
sacrilegious talk and insults to the cross are
daily perpetrated. The ecclesiastics present
wander incessantly from place to place, they
whisper to each other, they send messengers
from stall to stall, they laugh, they chatter; they
give and take pleasantries and jokes; they hum
tunes, they chat between every verse; they step
from the sacristy to the choir, in order to gossip
more at ease; they hurry the chanting, so that
the whole morning's work, including the mass,
may not exceed an hour and three-quarters, and
that of the evening a single quarter of an hour,
although there are in all more than fifty psalms,
without reckoning canticles, hymns, responses,
and prayers. Liverani's list of scandals is much
longer and graver than we think fit to give it.
While making the sad recapitulation, he cannot
help exclaiming, "And these are the priests who
scruple to chant a Te Deum for the kingdom of
Italy!" Of course, at Rome, the secrecy of
private correspondence is shamelessly violated.

After an exact calculation of the sum produced
by the vaunted offering of St. Peter's obolus, it
turns out that the average contribution of the
faithful to their common spiritual father, in his
distress, is threepence sterling. Nevertheless,
the clerical journals announced that money
poured in by millions, and warriors by thousands
and thousands—legions of Legitimists,
commanded by Legitimist generals, and organised
by a Legitimist minister of war, whose mind
squints as frightfully as his eyes do. The Irish
heroes especially, indulging in savage orgies,
till they broke into mutiny and filled the taverns
and the streets with the cries of wild beasts, were
a painful contrast to the French soldiery, who
are as brave as they are obedient to discipline.
And then there are the pontifical Zouaves, who
shed small honour on their costume and their
name! A great nation like France may be
permitted to indulge in Zouaves, Turcos, or any
other military eccentricity, because after all she
lias the strength to back it; but at Rome, such
things are little better than a childish masquerade
and a feeble imitation. No one is surprised
to see a robust and vigorous individual amusing
himself with pugilism or wrestling; but it
would be a ridiculous spectacle to behold the
same sport attempted by a consumptive patient
who has been given up by the doctors, and who
is just at the point of breathing his last.

Of the various painful states of mind in which
it is possible for a man to find himself, one of
the most uncomfortable is the case of not knowing
what to think. Poor Monsignor Liverani
is puzzled by a strange contradiction. The
Roman clergy is exceedingly rich in lands, in
capital, in revenues; it is the owner of the
greater portion of the Ager Latinus; it has
splendid temples, magnificent ceremonies, a