sumptuous court; it has a numerous train, of
partisans, clients, and devotees, mixed up with
every class of society; it holds in trust
innumerable charitable institutions, endowments,
subsidies, hospitals, orphan asylums, and other
means of benevolence, the list of which fills
three big volumes; it possesses the all-powerful
ministry of the Word, of religious societies, of
the pulpit and the confessional, every mode of
directing the will, the passions, and the
conscience of the people: and yet, with all these
elements of authority and power, with such
irresistible baits and bribes, you will hear, if you
listen closely, from one end of Rome to the
other, the whispered watchword, "Down with
the priesthood!"

The reason of so strong an aversion may be,
that Human Nature has its Non possumus as
well as the Pope; there are inconsistencies,
hypocrisies, and iniquities which, through long
suffering, it cannot put up with. A time comes
when it says with the not very thin-skinned
statesman, "This is too bad!" With a few more
facts like the judicial murder of the innocent
Locatelli, even Roman patience will at last tire out.

Some people may wonder that a cardinal, an
ecclesiastic, does not meet with some check
within the Church itself. But Liverani informs
us that Antonelli's confessor is a Jesuit; he
professes a great respect for the order, which he
styles a society of virtuous and learned men;
but he is obliged to admit that, at every great
criminal's elbow you will always find a virtuous
Jesuit. Beside the name of La Pompadour you
find that of a virtuous Jesuit. Of late years,
Father Mignardi, a Jesuit, is Cardinal
Antonelli's spiritual director, although the Roman
people, starved by the monopoly of the brothers
and friends of the secretary of state, entertain
serious doubts whether he have any soul at all
to direct. And the Jesuits cannot profess
ignorance; for their charities and the exercise of
their ministry take them every day among the
people, and they know what sufferings are
inflicted by a tyranny now nearly three lustres old.

The Jesuits entertain their own views
respecting history and politics. One of their
great historians states: "The holy king (Louis
the Ninth) in person, assisted by sixty bishops,
inaugurated the Holy Inquisition by the execution,
in the Place de Grève, of ninety-five heretics,
who were burnt alive. This good work was
so agreeable to God, that he vouchsafed to France
a superabundant harvest." The facts
themselves are perfectly true; their connexion,
as cause and effect, are perfectly jesuitical. In
respect to policy, the brigand system possesses
an efficacy peculiarly its own. "You Neapolitans,
foolish folk, who banish your rightful king and
accept an usurper, see what you get by the
change! Your throats shall be cut, your houses
burned, your women outraged, when you are
least prepared to offer resistance, until you take
back again your beloved Bourbon and his suite
of saintly counsellors. Barbarism and cruelty
is it? May be; the end justifies the means."

The spoilers of unarmed peasantry receive
their mission of brigandage from Rome; but
who really governs Rome is a question about
which the learned differ. The Holy Father
reigns, some say, but the reverend Jesuits
govern. When the court of Rome replies to
the powers who counsel reform, "Non possumus!
No compromise!" it is not poor Pius
the Ninth who speaks; still less is it Cardinal
Antonelli, who, in that case at least, is only a
docile instrument; it is the General of the
Jesuits proclaiming through the Pope's mouth
the infallibility of Ignatius Loyola.

All which may be mere scandal, like Liverani's
appreciation of the Sacred College. As to
learning, he says, they have one famous celebrity,
Cardinal Wiseman, who covers all the rest with
his mantle; there are also men of remarkable
scientific merit, such as Gousset, Morichini, and
Baluffi, but they are either foreigners or are kept
as far away from Rome as possible. Even
practical qualities excite suspicious jealousy.
Cardinal Brunelli was sequestered at Osimo, and
Cardinal Marini incurred the same danger;
because, to experience, honesty, and delicacy (very
rare in the climate of Rome), he unites a piety
which is worthy of better times. The rest of
the heap is composed of mediocrity, shabbiness,
incompetence, crass ignorance, want of merit,
galvanised piety and intelligence; ephemeral
reputations, fabricated and trumped up as a
means of rising; elastic consciences, whether
for good or for evil; borrowed information, with
talents just sufficient to satisfy nuns, in whose
company they waste great part of their time;
and ambition filtered into the very bone.

LONDON WATER.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.

FEW of us who have fed in youth upon stories
of adventure and discovery have been without
an early ambition to distinguish ourselves as
travellers. Not knowing that Bruce was looked
upon as a dangerous romancer, and forgetting
that Mungo Park perished in the desert, we
have most of us laid down the well-thumbed
records of their wanderings with a youthful
yearning which nothing but a good tramp
could satisfy. In this half-gipsy, sea-going,
harness-breaking frame of mind, we have regarded
every muddy fishpond as an undiscovered
mysterious lake, and every slow-creeping rivulet
as an untraced Nile. Then, as each summer's
Saturday came round—the blessed Saturdays on
which the school-doors had no power to hem us
in, and even the stern schoolmaster looked and
spoke like some other man—we have sallied
forth with a bundle of cold meat and bread; a
top-string, leaded at the end, to use as a plummet;
a faithful, blinking, idiotic-looking dog,
whose red tongue lolled out, to the horror of
passing old gentlemen; and a sixpenny compass
bought at a toyshop, which shook about like a
mountain of calves'-foot jelly. Turning our
backs upon the spreading claws of bricks and
mortar, we have sought for wonders, and have
met them more than half way. We have magnified