were paid five per cent. on less than half the whole debt; and, as the rest was due to nobles, who were either exiled or proscribed, it was never paid at all. Thus, at the restoration of the Pope, he found that the French had freed his government from a debt of $136,000,000, chiefly at the expense of corporations and individuals in the Papal States. The receipts of the Pope, in 1818, were $11,536,000; of which $312,000 were from the Lottery of Rome; $130,000 from that of Tuscany; ecclesiastical proceeds in Italy, $ 400,000; from Spain, in good years, $200,000; from France and Germany each $20,000. Since that time the proceeds from Spain must have nearly ceased; and the embarrassment of the Papal government has recently become such as to lead his Holiness to pledge a part of his territory to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, as a means of raising necessary funds. The expenses of the police of the city of Rome are $100,000 annually, and those of the Papal palace, $160,000. There are now subject to the nomination of the Pope, two vicars, twelve patriarchs, and seven hundred and seven bishops, or suffragan bishops.

The efforts of the Church of Rome in preventing the publication, and the introduction into Catholic countries, of works opposed to her interest and form of belief, make an important item in her history. In the controversies which distracted the Christian church during the fifth century, the practice of the Roman courts of justice extensively prevailed, in which questions were decided in accordance with the opinions of the greatest number of learned and distinguished writers of former ages. This reverence for the great names of antiquity led unprincipled religious disputants to present their own spurious productions to the public, as having been written by the early fathers of the church, and even by Christ himself. The immense number of these vile forgeries with which the church was flooded, induced, it is said, the Roman Pontiff Gelasius, in the year 494, to assemble a convention of bishops from the whole empire, at Rome, in order that they might examine all the works bearing the names of distinguished individuals, and decide which were genuine and which were fictions. The famous decree, which contains a list of these forgeries, and condemns them as prohibited books, is to be found in all the larger collections of the Acts of Councils, though it is not quoted by any writer previous to the ninth century, and learned men have questioned its genuineness. 18

VOL. I.

In later times we find, that by the eighteenth section of the Council of Trent, certain members of that body were appointed to prepare an Index, or list of all books accounted injurious to the interests of the Catholic church, and this Index was first published by Pius the Fourth, March 22d, 1564. The immediate motive to this movement was the fact, that Luther and the other early reformers were then, by their works, exerting a wide-spread and increasing influence, and the easiest way of counteracting them, was by condemning their writings as heretical, and committing them to the flames. Thus we find, in the rules of the Index adopted by the Council of Trent, that not only were all books prohibited which, previously to the year 1515, had been condemned, either by the Popes or by general councils, but also (to use the words of the decree), "The books of heresiarchs, who since that year had originated or advocated heresies, as also of those who are the heads or leaders of heretics, such as Luther, Calvin, Zuinglius, Balthasar, Pacimontanus, Schwenckfeldius, and others like them, are entirely prohibited."

According to the fourth rule of the Index, it is decreed, that inasmuch as it as manifest, from experiment, that if the reading of the Holy Bible in the vulgar tongue be permitted indiscriminately to all, more injury than benefit will arise from it; a special written license to read it may be granted by a bishop, inquisitor, or other duly authorized person, to such as would be in no danger of injury from it. But those who should presume to read the Bible without such license, could not receive absolution for their sins. Booksellers who should sell, or in any other way furnish, Bibles to those who had no license to read them, were to forfeit the price of their books, and suffer such other punishment as the bishop might see fit to impose. Books of controversy between Catholics and heretics, written in the vulgar tongue, were placed under the same restrictions with the Bible; and manuscript works were regulated by the same rules with those printed. All books on astrology, necromancy, magic, divination, and similar arts, were entirely prohibited. Even books allowed by the Index might be prohibited by bishops or inquisitors, within their own provinces or dioceses, if they thought proper to do The Talmud of the Hebrews, and all its annotations and glosses, and all Talmudical and cabalistic writings, were entirely prohibited, as was also the book Magazon, (which contains an account of the public and private religious rites and

so.

ceremonies of the Jews,) except when printed in the Hebrew tongue.

Additional constitutions and rules of the Index of prohibited books, have been published by Clement the Eighth, and Benedict the Fourteenth. The present congregation of the Index consists of eleven cardinals, and numerous counsellors and reporters. Different committees and individuals have assigned to them, for examination, works in various languages, and on given sciences, with which they are acquainted. While at Civita Vecchia, I became acquainted with a commission of ten or twelve learned monks, who had come there from Rome to examine the books and prints brought by sea from the north of Europe, and especially from Brussels. They were quite communicative as to the details of their official duties.

The copy of the Roman Index now before me, was published in 1758, and has, in the form of an appendix, additional lists of books, put forth in the years 1763, 1770, and 1779. In 1786, a new edition of the Index was published, containing, with subsequent additions, 5,600 prohibited books. The present Pope has just published another edition, containing more than 8,000 works. Among the books prohibited, are the histories of Hume, Gibbon, Mosheim, and Robertson; the metaphysical works of Locke, and his Reasonableness of Christianity; Copernicus, on the Revolutions of Celestial Bodies; all the works of Erasmus, Tillotson's Sermons, Combe's Phrenology, History of the Operations of the British Bible Societies; the eleventh volume of Sismondi's History of the Italian Republics, and his smaller work on the same subject, which was prepared for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia. This last work I bought of a bookseller in Florence, who informed me that he was permitted to sell it in English, but not in either Italian or French. To the list of works noticed above, we might add most of the truly able and independent works in history, theology, and the various sciences which have been published in Europe for several centuries past.

The only editions of the Bible tolerated in Italy are that of Martini, Archbishop of Florence, published in 1803, with copious notes, making in all thirty-six octavo volumes; and another by an Archbishop of Turin, in twenty-three large volumes. The price of one of these editions, which I met with in a bookstore in Naples, was more than one hundred and twenty dollars. Thus, for the poor, at least, it must there be

extremely difficult to obey the divine command, to search the Scriptures. The only religious books which they are permitted to have, are the lives of a few Catholic saints, containing quite as much fable as truth.

A permission to read the prohibited books is granted in given cases to those who as authors, or otherwise, need their aid; with the exception, however, of such works as treat of judicial astrology, and similar subjects, as also heretical works; and care is to be taken that the works, to read which permission is given, do not come into the hands of any but the petitioner.

The edition of the Spanish Index which I have was published in 1790, and varies essentially in the works prohibited, and in other important respects, from the Roman Index.

The usual number of prisoners in the Papal States is more than nine thousand, who are kept by contract, for thirteen cents a day each, the contractor making a profit of two cents on each person. Nearly two hundred prisoners are in some cases confined in the same room, and thus are the young fully exposed to the corrupting influence of older offenders. Those whom I saw in confinement had a filthy, squalid appearance, and, as elsewhere in Italy, crowded to the grated windows of their prison, clamorously begging for money of all who passed near them.

All criminals in Spain, Italy, and France, who are condemned to work in chains, are called galley-slaves. Nothing is more common in the cities of Southern Europe, than to pass a company of these poor wretches, chained together in pairs, and working, or moving along under the care of soldiers. The usual number of this class of criminals, in the Papal States, is from four to five hundred, and robbers and murderers are often found among them.

During the year 1817, there were, in all the hospitals of Rome, 34,336 persons; of whom 30,084 were cured and left the hospitals, and 3,174, or about ten per cent., died. There were received the same year, at the hospital of Spirito Santo, 1043 foundlings, of whom 419 died. The number

of individuals in hospitals in Rome, is at least one third greater than the proportion of other cities of Europe. Among the causes of this are the great poverty of the people, and the fevers, especially the fever and ague, which is exceedingly prevalent in the months of August and September.

Charitable institutions, called Conservatories, are frequent

ly met with in the cities of Southern Europe, where young girls are received, and supported until they are married, or otherwise provided for. In Rome they are required, when admitted, to deposit fifty dollars, to bring bed and bedding, four changes of clothes, and several smail kitchen utensils. At their marriage they receive seventy-five dollars, as a dowry. As only the higher classes of females are able to enter nunneries, and as large numbers of men, the poor as well as the rich, lead lives of celibacy in convents, there must of course be many poor females who cannot marry, and for whom provision must be made in institutions like those just noticed.

In Rome, as elsewhere in Catholic countries, many of the poor are daily fed with soup and bread, at the doors of the convents. From the fact that blindness appeals so strongly to the sympathies of the benevolent, it is said that two thirds of the beggars in the large cities of Europe, either are or pretend to be blind. This class are more numerous in Spain than in any other country I have visited, and the shrewdness and sagacity which they show in moving about, and in the methods to which they resort to obtain a livelihood, are extremely interesting. As a specimen of the tricks which these beggars sometimes practise, the following anecdote may serve as an example. Two medical officers belonging to our ship were accosted one day, in Spain, by a poor beggar, led along by a little child. As with piteous tones he besought their charity, the thought occurred to them that perhaps his eyes were in a condition for couching, and that thus they might restore him to sight. On raising his eyelids, however, what was their surprise to find a pair of as bright, clear-seeing eyes as one would wish to behold.

The customs connected with the burial of the dead in Italy, differ widely from those of our own country. The corpses of females whose friends are wealthy are dressed in the gayest manner, with robes of purple, silk, shoes and gloves, of fancy colors, ribands, and jewels. The face is commonly painted and exposed to view, and the funeral, which takes place an hour after sunset, is attended by a long procession, composed of the lower orders of friars, and of the members of those fraternities which exist throughout Italy, organized for the purpose of aiding at each others' funerals, these latter wearing white, red, or gray dresses, with a conical cap drawn over the head, having holes in it, through which they may see and breathe. Each one in the