author tells us, "A loan had to be contracted and an external debt created.' [It was said at the time that the terms on which his loan was negotiated were most disadvantageous.] Public property had to be ruinously sold, and profitable sources of national income farmed out for a present advantage and eventual loss, and much property belonging to ecclesiastical corporations. was enfranchised and its proceeds converted into government funds.' But notwithstanding that temporary relief was thus obtained at the expense of future embarrassment, payments of all sorts ran into arrears, whether dividends, salaries, pensions, or assignments' (p. 431-32), to the great distress of all classes of public creditors who were not sufficiently formidable to make their claims respected. But though the revolution originally caused the financial embarrassments which continued to accumulate during Gregory's reign, it cannot be said to justify them. The sums actually seized by the insurgents in the provincial chests were not considerable, and the rebellion did not last long enough to interfere materially with the collection of the taxes; other causes must have occasioned the yearly deficit. In their normal state the Papal finances are liable to abuses which it needs the strong hand of an able administrator to repress. In a time of alarm and confusion, in the midst of temporary expedients and exceptional measures, it is more than probable much waste and malversation must have occurred.

One item that had now for some generations figured in the Papal budget was reprobated by all the most reasonable reformers as immoral, and has been held up to public odium by the Marchese Azeglio in his pamphlet on Roman affairs.* The proceeds of this tax were supposed to be devoted to charity, and were therefore more immediately under the control of the Pope, but the expenses of collection are said to exceed 60 per cent. of the gross amount, and as its moral effects are very injurious, it is but fair to suppose the Pope might have been induced to give it up; but no reform could have been less palatable to the mass of the people-it was the lottery.

It is not so many years since the walls of London were placarded with the advertisements of the state lottery, and the newspapers were filled with its 'puffs.' But mischievous as was the English lottery, its drawings were comparatively few, and the price of even fractional tickets exceeded the means of the labouring classes. In Rome the whole scheme is different. Once a fortnight at Monte Citorio, in presence of the public, five numbers are drawn from a "Tombola,' containing the numerical series from one to a

6

hundred. Previously to the drawing, at the various lottery offices each gambler inscribes his name for what numbers he pleases, and stakes what he chooses on his guess. If two of his numbers are drawn, he gains a vast multiple of his original stake-if three, still more, though in each case much less than, according to the arithmetical odds against him, he ought to receive; and hence the gain of Government. Moreover, as if this was not enough to give aliment to the passion for gambling, the State will play with him on the result of the provincial and foreign lotteries-'Qui si giuoca per Bologna,' per Firenze,' &c., is read on the windows of the lottery offices. There are many whose whole life is thus absorbed in one eternal frenzy of play. They neglect all honest industry, they starve themselves and their families, in the attempt to become suddenly rich, and in spite of perpetual disappointment continue to fancy that they are ever about to grasp the golden vision which flies before them. Every event is viewed only as it suggests numbers. Books are published which establish the relation between numbers and natural objects. Thus the phantoms of a dream or the accidents of a walk supply the elements of a lottery speculation. Public sights of all kinds, more especially executions, are frequented by the superstitious for this purpose; the age of the culprit, the number of his crimes, the number of words he speaks on the scaffold, or any other incidents which strike a heated fancy, are treasured up in the memory to be used for the lottery. The almanacks are full of lists of numbers asserted to have sympathetic and mysterious affinities with each other. The spirit liberated from purgatory by the prayers of the faithful is supposed to be particularly anxious to reward its benefactor, and, in its upward flight, has no more ready method than to suggest to him lucky numbers for the next drawing. An English traveller some years ago was surprised at seeing the number of persons walking up and down the cemetery of Santo Spirito with rosaries in their hands reciting Aves for the benefit of the departed. He was struck with admiration of 'their simple faith and ardent affection for their friends till he was undeceived by his Italian companion. Alas! it was all for the lottery. What dram-drinking is to the body this fatal mania is to the mind-it destroys all health, vigour, and activity, and paralyses at last by the abuse of unhealthy stimulants. But the Italian gambler would be as little disposed to acquiesce in the suppression of his lottery, as the English drunkard in the introduction of the law of Mayne.'

In the course of his long reign Gregory spent more money in public works and in additions to the Papal collections than perhaps was warranted by the exhausted state of the exchequer.

The

The excavations in the Forum, and other similar operations, were commenced rather for a political than an archæological object. They were designed to secure the attachment of the working classes of the capital by giving them employment; and in this they resembled the works many years afterwards directed by the French Commission for the 'Organisation du Travail,' a likeness which was further carried out by the idle conduct of the workmen, who were perfectly aware they incurred no danger of dismissal by misconduct. In adding largely as he did to the library of the Vatican, Gregory may be thought to have gratified his own taste, for he was certainly fond of literature; but in purchasing the many collections with which he enriched the museums he must chiefly have been influenced by an enlightened sense of the dignity of the fine arts, and the almost political importance they claim at Rome, rather than by his own love of art. It is said that when Pius VII. preferred Zurla, a junior member of the same white order for promotion, one of his advisers, somewhat scandalized, urged the claims of Padre Cappellari. Very well,' replied the Pope, we will go and see him.' His Holiness was of course received with due honour at S. Gregorio by Cappellari, the superior of the convent. He expressed a desire to see the pictures. What pictures? was there any picture in the church his Holiness wished to see?' 'Oh, no! the two famous frescoes in the chapel of S. Andrew in the garden.' The superior had never seen them and knew nothing about them. I told you,' said Pius, in returning, 'the abbot of S. Gregorio was better in his convent.' Leo, however, did not allow even the recent promotion of a cardinal of the same order to obstruct Cappellari's advancement, and in defiance of precedent he gave him a hat. Gregory has been accused of inordinate vanity in putting up fulsome inscriptions to his own glorification on all the works of his pontificate. The desire to commemorate what has been done in each reign is inseparable from an elective monarchy. Of the utility of such inscriptions we have already_expressed our opinion. But the custom is liable to abuse. In the reign of the late and the present Popes, no ancient monument has been defaced, nor a modern one raised to replace it, not a wall has been built, not a crack has been filled up, without a pompous inscription in the grandiose style of modern lapidary Latin to record the sordid mischief; and though almost as much as was possible of the picturesque beauty of the Campagna and the antique splendour of the city has disappeared under their auspices, no dozen of their predecessors have laid claim to so much gratitude for their taste and munificence.

The political disturbances of Gregory's reign, and the disorders

to

to which in many ways they gave rise, had the natural effect of increasing the numbers and audacity of the brigands, who had received a severe check, but had never been extirpated, in the pontificate of his predecessor. Cardinal Wiseman labours to prove that brigandage is the necessary product of a mountainous soil. We do not question the influence of physical causes in deciding the occupations and modifying the characters of mankind, but happily every man's experience will tell him that brigands are not the necessary results of mountains, nor ribbonmen of bogs, though these natural obstacles to the action of regular troops are the obvious resource of all who are at war with legitimate government. The only two real causes of brigandage are a want of moral education in the people, and a want of vigour in the government. Brigandage was the scourge of medieval Europe. It flourished longest in those countries which, being divided into many small states, afforded peculiar facilities for escaping from justice. Italy and Germany continued to be infested by organized banditti, when England and France were only annoyed by highwaymen and footpads; and if in Southern Italy the mischief is still rife, the chief cause is that in its remote villages too much of medieval barbarism is still suffered to linger. From early times the Papal States have always been the chosen resort of banditti. Sixtus V., the swineherd of Montalto, made war upon them with the ferocity of one who had sprung from the class which recruits their ranks, and who knew them well. The French proceeded against them with more than all the rigour of military law-Consalvi endeavoured to dissolve their comitive,' Leo to exterminate them. He was determined to make the roads secure for the pilgrims whom he expected to flock to Rome in the holy year, though what, in defiance of Horace's 'Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator,' he thought the mendicant peasants whom he called to his capital had to fear from the robber, it is hard to say. But to effect a radical cure something more than the vigour to punish and repress is necessary. In the Papal States many causes cooperate to swell the numbers of the banditti. There is a want of employment for the population; the life of the agricultural peasant is hard; and there is no outlet, such as is afforded by the army or navy, for the wilder spirits who are enamoured of a life of adventure and indisposed to the drudgery of labour. Idleness leads to vice, the passions are strong, murder inspires no horror and no remorse, the assassin escapes from the weak, perhaps the conniving police, and flies to the mountains, and there under some experienced capo-brigante graduates in guilt. But the chief cause of the evil is the sympathy of the people with crime, and

for

for this we must in same degree blame the administration of criminal justice, which is not such as to enforce respect or inspire fear. Criminal processes are tedious, their results uncertain and capricious. The execution of capital sentences is often delayed till it appears cruel. The galleys are much the same hotbeds of depravity which our own gaols were not very long ago. The police are corrupt, and the government is not strong enough to be clear-sighted as to the faults of its own agents. Sbirro' (police officer) has for ages been associated in the Italian mind with all that is infamous. No respectable man will undertake the office, or if he does, he soon becomes what temptation and public contempt compel him to be. The regulations of the police are in some instances opposed to the dictates of humanity. When a man is struck by the murderer's knife, the presumption of the law is against those who are found near the body, and presumption may lead to a detention of uncertain duration in a loathsome gaol. All fly from the wounded man as if he was infected with the plague, and he is left to languish without help, till the brothers of some confraternity, who alone can approach him with safety, are called. The measures of government to suppress brigandage were ill chosen for the purpose of raising the standard of morality, or enlisting public feeling on the side of the law. Consalvi, to disunite the organised bands, set a high premium on treachery, and thus the idea of good faith and loyalty become associated with perseverance in crime. The means adopted by Pius and Leo, for cutting off the supplies of the brigands, pressed so hardly on the ignorant and helpless population of the district that public sympathy took part with the sufferers. Consalvi at one time had given orders for the removal of the whole of the population of the town of Sonnino. The relations of brigands unconvicted of any crime were imprisoned or exiled to distant provinces. Those who supplied them with food were summarily executed by a military commission without appeal, while perhaps the really guilty, the wretch stained with the blood of countless murders, was enabled to bargain with the weak government for impunity. Thus justice bore the aspect of persecution, and the simple untutored peasantry felt that they were punished for the guilt of others, or at most for obeying the instincts of humanity and natural affection. Above all, the primary education in the Roman States is bad, and in the remote villages is none at all. Religion has degenerated into formalism. The clergy are few in numbers, feeble in influence, and in many cases, it is said, but little advanced in the moral or intellectual scale beyond their flocks, whose ill-gotten gains they share as the price of expiatory

masses.