IN THE EUROPEAN ATMOSPHERE -1853-1856 555 



says: &quot;To which of the saints did you pray?&quot; Antony 

 answers, &quot;To not one of them all, I assure you. I don t 

 like your way of bargaining with the saints : Do this and 

 I 11 do that. Here is so much for so much. Save me 

 and I will give you a taper or go on a pilgrimage. Just 

 think of it ! I should certainly have prayed to St. Peter, 

 if to any saint ; for he stands at the door of heaven, and 

 so would be likeliest to hear. But before he could go 

 to the Almighty and tell him my condition, I might be 

 fifty fathoms under water.&quot; Adolphus: &quot;What did you 

 do then ? Antony : &quot; I went straight to God himself, and 

 said my prayer to him ; the saints neither hear so readily 

 nor give so willingly. 



In the city itself were filth, blasphemy, and obscenity 

 unspeakable. No stranger could take his seat at a cafe 

 without having proposals openly made to him which 

 would have disgraced Pompeii. Cheatery and lying pre 

 vailed on all sides. Outside the city was brigandage, 

 so much so that various parties going to Paestum took 

 pains to combine their forces and to bear arms. 



This, then, was the outcome of fifteen hundred years 

 of Christian civilization in a land which had been entirely 

 in the hands of the church authorities ever since the down 

 fall of the Roman Empire ; a country in which education, 

 intellectual, moral, and religious, had been from the first 

 in the hands of a body, claiming infallibility in its teach 

 ing of faith and morals, which had molded rulers and 

 people at its own will during all these centuries. This 

 was the result! It seemed to me then, as it seems to me 

 now, a reductio ad absurdum of the claims of any church 

 to superintend the education of a people; and if it be 

 insisted that there is anything exceptional in Italy, one 

 may point for examples of the same results to Spain, 

 the Spanish republics, Poland, and sundry other coun 

 tries. 



Before going to Italy, I had taken pains to read as 

 much as possible of the history of the country, and, 

 among other works, had waded through the ten octavo 



