Mr. Lyman on the Political, State of Italy. 



1821.1 



night, to a remote apartment, wliere 

 the instrument of torture — ropes, 

 wheels, aud I'raine-s, were strewed 

 around him, where he was questioned, 

 according to a Ciitechism of criminal 

 iRterrogatiou drawn up for such occa- 

 sions, and if he persisted in his denial, 

 handed over to the hau<jman and his 

 apparitors to he stripped, bruised, 

 tfiro\rn down, and liic;';iited, as ap- 

 j>arent preliminaries of being torUired. 

 We happened to have personal know- 

 ledge of a ciise of this gentle .adminis- 

 tration of justice, in the year 1817, in 

 one of the most resiHJctable cities of the 

 Jkiugdqm of Hanover. 



In the important points of the limita- 

 tion of Entails, and tiie abolition of 

 baronial privileges, the provisions of the 

 present law of the ecclesiastical state 

 are sufficiently liberal, and mig'it 

 furnish a lesson to countries that think 

 themselves more enlightened. The 

 civil law in the momentous article of 

 succ&ssion, is, with .i few unimportant 

 exceptions in the case of females, still 

 in force. If there were nothing else in 

 the civil law, to entitle it to our re- 

 spect, it would be this noble feature of 

 an equal succession ; and to every ex- 

 travagant commendation pronounced, 

 by the English writers, on the common 

 law, accompanied as these commenda- 

 tions so often are, parti(;ularly in the 

 work of Blackstone, with disparaging 

 comparisons of the Roman jurispru- 

 dence, we would reply, by pointing to 

 the Roman law of succession. It is 

 this aloue which makes the Roman law 

 essentially republican, and the English 

 law essentially aristocratic; and it is 

 quite easy to see that the comfort, in- 

 dependence, and happiness of private 

 life among the Romans, must have been 

 pi;omotco far more considerably by an 

 equal distribution of estates, than im- 

 pairetl by the despotic assumptions of 

 the princes. The last tall heavy only 

 on the ministers of state and the cour- 

 tiers ; while in the modern states of 

 Europe, particularly England, although 

 the subject is protected by an admirable 

 code of public rights from any consider- 

 able oppression on the part of the go- 

 vernment, the mass of families is 

 ground down by tiiis most unnatural 

 and aristocratical law of succession, 

 whidi turns out the younger sons and 

 the daughters upon the world. 



We pass over the fourth chapter, 

 whiidt contains an account of the jwlice 

 of Rouu;, and the mode of confinement 

 ia tlie prisons and at the public works ; 



443 



as also the fifth, in which maybe found 

 some curious original anecdotes on 

 exorcising, with a highly interesting 

 description of the office iuid sale of re- 

 lics. We confess we are not prepared 

 to find such gross superstitions, so 

 publicly kept up ; nor after all the 

 relics, which we have had the good 

 fortune to see, among others, the 

 skulls of the three wise men and of the 

 eleven thousand virgins at Cologne, did 

 we sui)pose that there was an office at 

 Rome where any relic wished for might 

 be publicly purchased, and with it a 

 diploma vouching for its authenticity. 



The sixth chapter contains an ac- 

 count of the finances of the ecclesiasti- 

 cal state, compiled apparently from 

 orltfinal documents. 



The seventh chapter of INfr. Lyman's 

 woi-k contains a raiscellaneous collec- 

 tion of anecdotes, relative to tiie ad- 

 mittance of strangers to the religiovs 

 festivals in Rome; the priesthood ; and 

 some pnir.ts of ecclesiastical jurisdic- 

 tion. The courtesy manifested to 

 foreigners at Rome may be seen in the 

 following remark of Mr. Lyman, on 

 the admission of strangere to the high 

 festivals in the Pauline chapel. 



' On one of the great ceremonies be- 

 fore Christmas, I have seen the Pope 

 kneeling on the floor of a splendid cha- 

 pel, belonging to St. Peter's, before an 

 altar upon which five hundred wax 

 candles were burning, and earnestly 

 repeating the prayers for the occasion, 

 in unison with many of the most dis- 

 tinguished cardinals of the church, also 

 upon their knees in different parts of 

 the chapel ; at the same time that 

 several huudi'cd strangers were crowd- 

 ing through the door with no little 

 noise aud vehemence ; were approach- 

 ing within a few feet of the person of 

 the Pontiff; and had completely sur- 

 rounded aud enveloped those of the 

 cardinals, who happened to be at their 

 devotions behind the line of his holi- 

 ness,' Artists of all nations are allowed 

 to design in any church at Romeon all 

 days of the week, and at all hours, 

 when the churi-h is regularly open. 

 Travellers are often led up to the rail- 

 ing of an altar to see a work of art, at 

 the moment when the priest is celebra- 

 ting mass. Prayers, incense, and cri- 

 ticism are mingled togetlier. Several 

 chapters could be written abounding in 

 fiuits similar to the foregoing. 1 do not 

 ]»retend to say, that these facts savour 

 only of indulgence, forbearance, and 

 liberality, on the part of the govern- 

 ment ; 



