196 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[FEB. 



by implication he is occasionally free enough, 

 he has always a word or two of apology for 

 them ; the whole, however, is touched with 

 a light and lively pencil never prosing 

 enough to weary. For the occasional free- 

 doms, not amounting perhaps to more than 

 flippancies, we leave him to his confessor. 



Of the Romans, (says he.) after living among 

 them many months, I know little more than their 

 general feelings. Though I was acquainted with 

 some of them, they are, very naturally, unwilling 

 to put themselves out of their way, to receive 

 successive flights of birds of passage ; whom, from 

 all I perceived, they do not like, even as passen- 

 gers. Those whom I met in company, T generally 

 found amiable, discontented people. (Vol. I. 

 p. 155). 



Discontented with the government, we sup- 

 pose, he means ; for elsewhere, he says : 



They complain, and with reason, that every 

 branch of the administration is entrusted to 

 the clergy, the chief of the goverment being of 

 that order. But why not admit his secular sub- 

 jects to secular charges? The Pope is, indeed, 

 head of the Church, and as such, chief of a re- 

 ligious government ; but he is also temporal 

 sovereign, and as such, head of a secular govern- 

 ment. These reflections are, however, of no avail 

 to the laymen who want places, and they pass 

 their lives as best they may. (Vol. I. p. 75). 



Though professing thus to know little of 

 the Romans, he speaks of the Italians, with 



to the strictness of its rules, and to its being 

 unable to possess any landed property, its mem- 

 bers subsisting only on voluntary charitable con- 

 tributions, this order is mainly supplied by poor 

 men. Then as to their laziness, these capucins' 

 convents have generally very large parishes 

 attached to them, which are served, with great 

 zeal and attention, by their priests: Yet an 

 Italian secular priest remarked to me for the 

 secular have a sort of enmity against the conven- 

 tual clergy that St. Francis was very astuto 

 cunning, in not having allowed his order to possess 

 landed property ; as on that account, no one had 

 any interest in dispersing it, and when dispersed 

 with others, it was always the first to re-establish 

 itself. One would, however, have expected " cun- 

 ning" to be the last epithet applied to the founder 

 of this useful order of self-denial. (Vol. II. p. 69). 



The author was at Rome soon time after 

 the election of Leo XIL an event which 

 he found to be the subject of general con- 

 versation. He details the on dits of the day, 

 which amount to this, that Leo's election 

 was the surprise of everybody. The courts 

 of France, Austria, and Spain have each of 

 them a veto against any particular cardinal ; 

 but as this veto can only be once exercised, 

 the exercise of it is usually delayed to the 

 latest moment. Two-thirds of the conclave 

 decide the election. Cardinal Sevaroli, it 

 seems, was n the point of being elected, 

 when the representative of Austria inter- 

 posed, on the ground, it was understood, 

 that Sevaroli, when legate at Vienna, had 



respect to their religious belief, in these ge- refused to be present at Napoleon's mar- 

 neral, but probably pretty correct terms: ri age with the Archduchess. Sevaroli, on 



his rejection, had influence enough to re- 

 commend his friend Gerga, and in the course 

 of the following night collected votes suffi- 

 cient to secure his election the following 

 morning, before the French representative, 

 who had orders to prevent Gerga's election, 

 had time to interpose. This is the story re- 

 ported, says tiie writer ; yet Cardinal de la 

 F., the French representative, speaks much 

 in praise of Leo XII., and asserts that his 

 election was decreed by Providence ; and 

 in truth, adds he, it seems to have been quite 



The religious belief of the Italians is like that 

 of the greater part of the world ; with this dif- 

 ference, however, # is free from scepticism. They 

 receive, and profess to believe, all the articles of 

 the Catholic faith ; they question nothing : they 

 deny nothing ; they admit every thing ; but this 

 admission, this belief alters nothing in their morals 

 or conduct, they themselves never think of it ; they 

 have been brought up so; they have be*n told that 

 it is the religion they are to belong to ; they see it 

 professed by all around them ; none do, none ever 

 have arraigned fits truth, they have never been 



called upon to decide between adverse opinions, and providential, if the court of France was 



they therefore allow those they found to continue 

 as a matter of course. Although many adopt the 

 modern spirit of philosophy, yet the generality seem 

 to think their easy and inconclusive manner of 

 professing the established religion to be less 

 troublesome than would be a philosophical oppo- 

 sition. (Vol. II. 118). 



Speaking of monks, he says : 



I believe that the remarks of English travellers 

 on the " dirty, lazy monks," apply generally to 

 those capucins, one of whom now stood on the 

 rock before nie. As to their dirtiness, poverty 

 is the spirit of their order; before the institution 

 of which, all convents, if not exclusively reserved 

 for nobles, required of those admitted into their 

 communities at least a good education, and a 

 dowry more or less considerable. St. Francis, 

 therefore, founded his order chiefly for the re- 

 ception of the poorer classes, of working men and 

 peasants, who are certainly capable of as much 

 devotion *s the higher ranks of society ; and owing 



opposed to it. 



Gerga, Leo XII. is said to be of a poor gentle- 

 man's family of Spoleti. In his youth he had 

 been a great chasseur, and followed the chase as 

 an exercise beneficial to his health. On this ac- 

 count, as soon as his exaltation was made known, 

 it was hailed by the following epigram of the 

 still subsisting Pasquins: 



Se il Papa e cacciatore 



Son cani i Cardinal!, 



Son selve leProvincie, 



Ed i sudditi animali." 



Leo XII. is supposed to be a great admirer and 

 advocate of the ancien regime of ancient man- 

 ners and customs and of wishing to bring his sub- 

 jects to a great severity of morals and appearance. 

 Tim?, according to the plan of reform, he has pub- 

 lished edicts, by which he forbids drinking in 

 wine-houses ; those who are dry, are obliged to 

 buy through a grate the measure of wine, and 

 either to drink it standing in the street, or to carry 



