without submitting each volume to clerical supervision.  An Italian gentleman, resident here, had to my own knowledge to obtain a special permission in order to retain a copy of Rousseau’s works in his private library.  The Roman nobles are not allowed to hunt because the Pope considers the amusement dangerous.  Profane swearing is a criminal offence.  Every Lent all restaurateurs are warned by a solemn edict not to supply meat on fast days, and then told that “whenever on the forbidden days they are obliged to supply rich meats, they must do so in a separate room, in order that scandal may be avoided, and that all may know they are in the capital of the catholic

world.”  Forced marriages are matters of constant occurrence, and even strangers against whom a charge of affiliation is brought are obliged either to marry their accuser, or make provision for the illegitimate offspring.  In the provinces the system of interference is naturally carried to yet greater lengths.  Nine years ago certain Christians at Bologna, who had opened shops in the Jewish quarter of the town, were ordered to leave at once, because such a practice was in “open opposition to the Apostolic laws and institutions.”  Again, Cardinal Cagiano, Bishop of Senigaglia, published a decree in the year 1844, which has never been repealed, to promote morality in his diocese.  In that decree the following articles occur:

“All young men and women are strictly forbidden, under any pretext whatever, to give or receive presents from each other before marriage.  All persons who have received such presents before the publication of this decree, are required to make restitution of them within three months, or to become betrothed to the donor within the said period.  Any one who contravenes these regulations is to be punished by fifteen days imprisonment, during which he is to support himself

at his own expense, and the presents will be devoted to some pious purpose to be determined on hereafter.”

I could multiply instances of this sort indefinitely, but I know of none more striking than the last.

So much for the mode in which the system is worked, and now as to its practical result.  To judge fully, it is necessary to get behind the scenes, a thing not easy for a stranger anywhere, least of all here.  There is too the further difficulty, that when you have got behind the scenes, it is not very easy to narrate your esoteric experiences to the public.  Even if there were no other objection, it would be useless to quote individual stories and facts which have come privately to my knowledge, and which would show Rome, in spite of its external propriety, to be one of the most corrupt, debauched, and demoralized of cities.  Each separate story can be disputed or explained away, but the weight of the general evidence is overpowering.  In these matters it is best to keep to the old Latin rule, “Experto crede.”  I have talked with many persons, Romans, Italians, and foreign residents, on the subject, and from one and all I have heard similar

accounts.  Every traveller I have ever met with, who has made like inquiries, has come to a like conviction.  In a country where there is practically neither press nor public courts, nor responsible government, where even no classified census is allowed to be taken, statistics are hard to obtain, and of little value when obtained.  Personal evidence, unsatisfactory as it is, is after all the best you can arrive at.  With regard then to what, in its strictest sense, is termed the “morality” of Rome, I must dismiss the subject with the remarks, that the absence of recognized public resorts and agents of vice may be dearly purchased when parents make a traffic in their own houses of their children’s shame, and that perhaps as far as the state is concerned the debauchery of a few is a less evil than the dissoluteness of the whole population.  More I cannot and need not say.  With respect to other sins against the Decalogue, it is an easier task to speak.  There is very little drunkenness in Rome I freely admit, but then the Italians, like most natives of warm countries, are naturally sober.  Rome is certainly not superior in this respect to other Italian cities; since the introduction of the French soldiery probably the contrary.  At the street corners you

constantly see exhortations against profane swearing, headed “Bestemmiatore orrendo nome,” but in spite of this, the amount of blasphemies that any common Roman will pour forth on the slightest provocation, is really appalling.  Beggars too are universal.  Everybody begs; if you ask a common person your way along the street, the chances are that he asks you for a “buono mano.”  Now, even if you doubt the truth of Sheridan’s dictum, that no man could be honest without being rich, it is hard to believe in a virtuous beggar.  The abundance, also, of lotteries shakes one’s faith in Roman morality.  A population amongst whom gambling and beggary are encouraged by their spiritual and temporal rulers is not likely in other respects to be a virtuous or a moral one.  The frequency of violent crimes is in itself a startling fact.

To my eyes, indeed, the very look of the city and its inhabitants, is a strong primâ facie ground of suspicion.  There is vice on those worn, wretched faces—vice in those dilapidated hovel-palaces—vice in those streets, teeming with priests and dirt and misery.  In fact, if you only fancy to yourself a city, where there are no manufactures, no commerce, no public life of any kind;

where the rich are condemned to involuntary idleness, and the poor to enforced misery; where there is a population of some ten thousand ecclesiastics in the prime of life, without adequate occupation for the most part, and all vowed to celibacy; where priests and priest-rule are omnipotent, and where every outlet for the natural desires and passions of men is carefully cut off—if you take in fully all these conditions and their inevitable consequences, you will not be surprised if to me, as to any one who knows the truth, the outward morality of Rome seems but the saddest of its many mockeries.

CHAPTER IV.  THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

“Senatus Populusque Romanus.”  The phrase sounds strangely, in my ears, like the accents of an unknown language or the burden of a half-forgotten melody.  In those four initial letters there seems to me always to lie embodied an epitome of the world’s history—the rise and decline and fall of Rome.  On the escutcheons of the Roman nobles, the S.P.Q.R. are still blazoned forth conspicuously, but where shall we look for the realities expressed by that world-famed symbol?  It is true, the Senate is still represented by a single Senator, nominated by the Pope, who drives in a Lord Mayor’s state coach on solemn occasions; and regularly, on the first night of the opera season, sends round ices, as a present to the favoured occupants of the second and third tiers of boxes at the “Apollo.”  This gentleman, by all the laws of senatorial succession,

is the undoubted heir and representative of the old Roman Senate, who sat with their togas wrapped around them, waiting for the Gaul to strike; but alas, the “Populus Romanus” has left behind him neither heir nor descendant.

Yet surely, if anything of dead Rome be still left in the living city, it should be found in the Roman people.  In the Mystères du Peuple of Eugêne Sue, there is a