37^ Voyage of the Novara. 



is still more surprising, he has anything but fallen off in 

 public estimation in consequence. This is due to the fact 

 that, unlike the female population, the Peruvians are very 

 tolerant in religious matters, and rather averse from those 

 pre-disposed to spiritual matters, whence there results the 

 very small influence of the Peruvian clergy, everywhere visi- 

 ble, and the obstinate virulent enmity with which also, since 

 the Spanish yoke was cast off, the priestly party oppose the 

 progress of liberal ideas. This feeling is moreover power- 

 fully aided by the ghastly testimony of history, that it was 

 the monks who first introduced the rack and the Inquisition 

 into the country. 



Father Vigil received me with much cordiality, and we 

 had a long talk upon a variety of subjects. At last it turned 

 upon his own well-known work, and the painful position in 

 which he felt himself with respect to the See of Rome. This 

 was the most interesting portion of our conversation. "It is 

 not Catholicism that has made the majority of Catholic na- 

 tions lag so woefully in the career of progress," exclaimed 

 the venerable priest, " but that which Catholicism has suffered 

 to be mixed up with it, — the Inquisition and Monasticism. 

 It is marriage and labour that make individuals moral and 

 useful, and nations great and powerful. Human society can 

 get on very well without monks or nuns, but not without 

 morals, not without matrimony and labour." 



Had I not transcribed these words almost at the moment 

 they were spoken, I should hardly have dared to repeat them 



