tombed in the repository of the dead, and the exploit of Cellini, which a view of the fort makes less surprising, has been repeated by a late prisoner.

Stanza CLIV.

Majesty,

Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.

The ceremonies of a religion must, except where they are sanguinary, be considered the most harmless part of it: if, however, our notions of primitive Christianity be at all correct, nothing can so little resemble it as the present worship at Saint Peter's. A noisy school for children in one corner; a sermon preached to a moveable audience at another; a concert in this chapel; a ceremony, half interrupted by the distant sounds of the same music, in another quarter; a ceaseless crowd sauntering along the nave, and circulating through all the aisles; listeners and gazers walking, sitting, kneeling; some rubbing their foreheads against the worn toes of the bronze Saint Peter, others smiling at them; confessors in boxes absolving penitents; lacquey de places expounding pictures; and all

actors. The plays were performed also in the cardinal's house, and "in media Circi caveâ," probably the Coliseum.

these individual objects and actions lost under an artificial heaven, whose grandeur and whose beauties delight and distract the eye.

Such is the interior of this glorious edificethe Mall of Rome; but religious sentiments are, perhaps, the last which it inspires. Where man has done such wonders, the ungrateful mind does not recur to the Deity; and it is not at all uncharitable to conclude, that the worship of the early Christians, condensed in the damp crypts and catacombs, was performed with a fervour which evaporates under the aerial vault of Saint Peter's.

His present holiness, talking to an Englishman of the church of Rome, said to him, " You are good Catholics in your country; here it is all talk (grido)." Pius had, at the same time, the discernment to attribute the superior earnestness of the Catholics of the United Kingdom, to their labouring under certain political disadvantages, which made their piety a point of honour and of pride. It has, in truth, been long before discovered, that penalties are little less effectual than premiums, in keeping alive an absurd superstition, which can fall into disuse only by entire toleration and neglect.

The indifference of the Italians, however, must be understood under certain limitations. It may be true of the loungers at Saint Peter's, of the

company which throngs the papal shows, most of whom are foreigners, or of the higher classes, and perhaps of the clergy themselves. But the very old of both sexes, the peasantry, the greater part of the females of all classes, but more in the higher than the middling orders, may be considered, in the whole, sufficiently obedient to the easy injunctions of their religion; and, as far as faith is concerned, cannot have been much surpassed by the most devout of their

ancestors.

In all those conditions of mankind most readily exposed to danger or distress, and most easily affected by a sense of weakness, by a hope of the better, by a fear of the worse, the ancient superstition has recovered whatever influence she may have lost by the French invasion. At Rome the days of miracles are returned, and these miracles are solemnly examined, and, what is not a whit more ridiculous, substantiated according to the rules of the council of Trent. If they coincide with this test of the sixteenth century, they are then ratified by the signature of cardinals, and published in the Court Gazette. It should be told that this last condition is prudent; for a miracle at Rome is resorted to like a fire at Constantinople; and on the notification of an exorbitant impost, the Madonnas open their eyes, in order, if such a

phrase may be allowed, to open those of the people. This took place in the spring of 1817; but the imprisonment of three or four priests soon restored both the statues and their worshippers to their usual insensibility. When the images do not declare themselves against the government, their animation is rather encouraged than forbidden, and superstition is allowed its full play. The new constitution which the enlightened Gonsalvi has proposed. does not apply to the spiritual condition of the people.

Pius VII. himself underwent, more than onee, a partial translation in 1811, at Savona, as we find by a picture now circulated in his capital'. When his Holiness returned to Rome in 1814, the people went out to meet him, with palms in their hands, and bearing full length portraits of him'; which is an honour never permitted except to the Beati, on their road to an apotheosis. Shortly after the happy event, the city was solemnly lustrated by holy water and missions, that is, sermons in the streets, to purge away the contagion of the French.

There are still the above-mentioned missions at Rome and elsewhere, when the audience are preached into the immediate conflagration of

I With this legend: Pius. Sept. Pont. Max. Savonæ. in Ecstasim iterum raptus die Assumptionis, B. M. V. 15ta Augusti, 1811. His Holiness is in the air.

their Metastasios or other pernicious volumes; and, stranger still, pious whippings are still publicly performed in addition to the discipline enjoined amongst the penances of the convents. The reader may not object to a short account of this extraordinary exercise, such as it is now administered in the oratory of the Padre Caravita and in another church at Rome.

1 The ceremony takes place at the time of vespers. It is preceded by a short exhortation, during which a bell rings, and whips, that is, strings of knotted whip-cord, are distributed quietly amongst such of the audience as are on their knees in the middle of the nave. Those resting on the benches come to edify by example only. On a second bell, the candles are extinguished, and the former sermon having ceased, a loud voice issues from the altar, which pours forth an exhortation to think of unconfessed, or unrepented, or unforgiven crimes. This continues a sufficient time to allow the kneelers to strip off their upper garments: the tone of the preacher is raised more loudly at every word, and he vehemently exhorts his hearers to recollect that Christ and the martyrs suffered much more than whipping -"Shew, then, your penitence-shew your sense of Christ's sacrifice-shew it with the whip." The flagellation begins.. The darkness, the tumultuous sound of blows in every direction